Figurative Language 1
After a storm destroys the gym roof, the principal calls the damage “a little inconvenience.” Identify the most specific device and explain the discrepancy.
Meiosis. The description drastically understates severe damage. The mismatch may create irony or suggest an attempt to minimize the problem.
“The wife manages the appointments.”
Active or Passive?
Active
Brady briefly recounts her encounter with a recently divorced friend and her subsequent thought while ironing. Identify the mode and explain its structural function.
Narration. This short sequence supplies the immediate occasion for the essay and leads into the central idea of wanting a wife.
“Her argument was a bridge.” and
“Her argument was like a bridge.”
Identify each device and explain what the shared comparison could suggest.
Metaphor, then simile. Both could suggest connecting people or ideas across a divide.
Rewrite this sentence as a claim that can be analyzed in a rhetorical analysis essay:
Brady lists many chores.
Brady’s accumulating list exposes the imbalance between the wife’s labor and the speaker’s freedom
“The White House announced a policy.” “We need more hands to finish the job.” Identify each device and distinguish the relationships.
Metonymy: the White House stands for the associated administration. Synecdoche: hands, a body part, stand for whole workers. Require the association versus part-whole distinction.
Restate: “The household tasks were completed” in active voice using an actor consistent with Brady’s critique. Explain what your revision makes visible.
“The wife completed the household tasks.” The revision identifies the worker omitted from the passive sentence, making responsibility for the labor explicit.
A writer sorts household labor into childcare, maintenance, and emotional support, then breaks childcare into specific tasks. Identify the mode and explain the organizing principle.
Classification and division. Classification groups the labor into categories; division breaks a larger category into component parts.
“Her argument was a bridge. Each example became a plank, and her reasoning held the structure together.” Identify the device and explain what sustaining the comparison adds.
Extended metaphor. The additional correspondences show how evidence and reasoning support the argument, developing the initial comparison instead of merely repeating it.
Claim: Brady exposes unequal priorities.
Give one specific piece of evidence from the passage using a short quotation.
The speaker expects the wife to miss work to care for children while treating the speaker’s own classes as nonnegotiable.
“O Justice, where have you gone?” “Justice turned its back on the town.” Identify the primary device emphasized in each.
Apostrophe in the first: direct address to an abstraction. Personification in the second: giving an abstraction human action. The first can also imply personification; credit the distinction in what each sentence emphasizes.
Original sentence: “The exhausted wife quietly completed the chores, but she needed help.”
Identify the parts of speech of exhausted, quietly, but, and she.
adjective
adverb
conjunction
pronoun
Brady catalogs chores such as preparing meals and caring for children. Explain how this material functions both as description and list and as exemplification.
The list describes the range and accumulation of responsibilities. The particular tasks also exemplify the broader claim that wives face extensive, unequal demands. Modes can work together.
“Break a leg!” before a performance; “At the end of the day, follow your dreams” in a generic graduation speech.
The first is an idiom meaning good luck. The second relies on clichés, familiar expressions weakened by overuse.
Add reasoning to this evidence: The speaker expects the wife to listen to the speaker’s ideas but dismisses the wife’s complaints. Explain how it supports a claim about unequal power.
The contrast treats the speaker’s concerns as worthy of attention while denying the wife an equivalent voice. It shows that the imbalance involves whose needs and thoughts count, not merely the number of chores.
“We demand comfort but deny compassion.” “The verdict brought a deafening silence.” Identify each device and explain how the placement of opposing ideas differs.
Antithesis places contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel structures. Oxymoron joins apparently contradictory terms in a compact phrase. Accept discussion of demand/deny and comfort/compassion as the balanced contrast.
“The wife silently accepted the demands.” “The demands were silently accepted.”
Which better supports analysis of how the passive construction can hide responsibility? Identify the grammatical change and one limitation of that claim.
The second removes the actor and foregrounds the demands, making the person who accepts them less visible. The first explicitly names the wife. Limitation: passive voice does not inherently conceal or deceive; context and the presence or absence of an actor matter. Neither sentence identifies who imposed the demands.
One essay traces how lost sleep leads to missed deadlines. Another gives ordered instructions for planning a weekly schedule. Identify the mode of each and explain why they are not interchangeable.
Cause and effect explains relationships between conditions and consequences. Process analysis explains how something is done or how a process works through ordered steps.
“Evaluating a source resembles inspecting a used car: attractive presentation is not enough; check its history and what supports its claims.” Identify the device and explain why it does more than simply state a likeness.
Analogy. It uses a familiar inspection process to explain source evaluation through corresponding actions, developing reasoning about how to judge reliability.
Revise this weak thesis into an appropriate one: “Brady uses repetition and lists to talk about wives.” Include a purpose and a defensible tone.
In her essay “I Want a Wife,” Judy Brady uses repeated demands and accumulating lists of domestic duties to expose unequal expectations in marriage, creating a satirical, increasingly critical tone.
“The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.” “Her perfect score was no small achievement.” Identify each device and explain its meaning.
Paradox: apparent contradiction expresses the insight that learning reveals the extent of one’s ignorance. Litotes: negating small affirms that the achievement is substantial. Require both devices and interpretations.
Brady uses repetition and lists to talk about wives.
Restate this sentence in order to name choices (verbs) instead of devices (nouns).
Brady repeats "I want a wife" and highlights specific activities that wives perform in dutiful service to their husbands in her essay.
Use compare/contrast to explain the relationship between the speaker’s desired opportunities and the wife’s expected sacrifices. Supply one paired example and connect it to Brady’s purpose.
For example, the speaker protects time for school while the wife must lose work time to provide care. The contrast exposes how one person’s freedom depends on another’s sacrifice, supporting the critique of unequal marriage expectations.
A writer places a description of an executive’s luxury lunch immediately beside a description of employees skipping meals. Identify the technique and explain how arrangement produces an argument without explicitly stating it.
Juxtaposition. The placement invites readers to compare unequal circumstances and infer criticism of the distribution of resources or priorities.
Whole Group Challenge:
You have 5 mins. Create a thesis statement for "I want a wife" in which you intend to analyze 2 choices.
The strongest thesis statement wins DOUBLE the points.
Teacher choice.