What figurative language does Thoreau use? Answer: Thoreau uses
simile and metaphor
throughout the text to emphasize his main arguments and to strengthen his persuasiveness. Many of his similes and metaphors serve to align himself with Nature.
What type of figurative language does Thoreau use as he compares the government to a machine in the following passage from civil disobedience?
Identify the metaphor Thoreau uses in part 1, paragraph 8 (e.g., Thoreau uses
a metaphor
to compare the government to a machine).
How does Thoreau use allusion in civil disobedience?
Allusion Examples in Civil Disobedience:
The play depicts events around a decaying, worsening political situation. The noun “drab” in this line means a prostitute or harlot, and so Thoreau is using this line
to say that states have prostituted themselves rather than enact meaningful change
.
What is a simile in Walden?
-Is
the comparison between two things that are like or unlike each other using “like” or “as”
. -Example of a simile form Thoreau’s Walden: “ The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has know it”
How does Thoreau use imagery?
Although Thoreau uses many literary devices throughout the story, imagery is on of the most prominent. Thoreau
uses sensory details to paint a picture of what he is experiencing in the woods
. He praises nature for being just what it is: nothing more and nothing less.
One audience he persuades openly, using his credibility and logic to convince a tougher audience, and to the other crowd, Thoreau describes and explains,
letting his emotions drive his argument, invoking feelings and thoughts from the people he’s reaching
. Thoreau lets his words do the persuasion for him.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. Thoreau is using the ancient distinction between time and eternity, along with the metaphor of
time as flow or movement
.
Thoreau creates a metaphor where injustice impacts a government machine. First, he writes that
citizens can let the government or machine try to fix itself or try to find the injustice within itself
, “…but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say break the law.
- “Bill is an early bird.”
- “Life is a highway.”
- “Her eyes were diamonds.”
Henry uses
emotional appeal
to persuade his audience, and an exceptional example of this is his famous quote: “Give me liberty or give me death!”. Henry’s use of rhetorical devices as means of persuasion were the key aspects of his speech and helped convince the colonists to fight back.
Thoreau uses a mythological allusion when he states that, “
They [the beans] attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus
.” (Thoreau, 1849) Although Thoreau wrote Walden many centuries after the Greek civilization had been wiped out, the historical use of strength as exemplified in the myth of Antaeus …
Black’s Law Dictionary includes nonviolence in its definition of civil disobedience. Christian Bay’s encyclopedia article states that civil disobedience requires “carefully chosen and legitimate means”, but holds that
they do not have to be non-violent
.
1. Thoreau uses antithesis to describe his purpose for going to live in the woods
to show that if he does the opposite it will be unfortunate
. His contradicting points set balance to the first paragraph. If he just put that he wanted to live in the woods, his argument would not have started out as strong.
Walden Pond, at the edge of which he lives, symbolizes
the spiritual significance of nature
. Every morning, Thoreau takes a bath in the pond and calls it a religious experience, reminding him of nature’s endless capacity to renew life and stirring him to higher aspirations.
The rhetorical devices that have the most impact on the reader in Thoreau’s essay are
allusions, rhetorical questions, pathos, imagery, and chronological narrative
.
The last paragraph is about
John Field, by comparison with Thoreau “a poor man, born to be poor . . . not to rise in this world” — a man impoverished spiritually as well as materially
.
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes “
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in
. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.”
- Simile. …
- Metaphor. …
- Implied metaphor. …
- Personification. …
- Hyperbole. …
- Allusion. …
- Idiom. …
- Pun.
Personification, onomatopoeia , Hyperbole, Alliteration, Simily, Idiom, Metaphor
.
