Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

In its discussion of sorrow in the first paragraph, the writer uses all of the following rhetorical techniques except:

• metaphor

• personification

• synecdoche

• polysyndeton

• sentence type variety

The primary mode of composition of paragraph two is:

• narration

• description

• cause and effect

• classification

• process

In blaming himself and expressing his shame in the sentences “I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low by-word among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly,” the writer uses all of the following rhetorical

techniques except:

• anaphora

• epistrophe

• parallelism

• repetition

• figurative language

The use of the pronoun “it” in line 29 refers to:

• the writer’s anguish

• the writer’s shame

• the writer’s name

• the writer’s mother’s death

• the writer’s country

In context, the word “tremulous” in line 44 most nearly means:

• exceedingly sensitive

• timid

• hesitant

• having little substance

• uncertain

The primary mode of composition of the final paragraph is:

• narration

• descriptin

• definition

• comparison and contrast

• argument

The writer of the passage is which of the following:

I. a husband

II. a prisoner

III. a writer

• I

• II

• III

• I and III

• I, II, and III

The major claim of the passage is expressed in all of the following

lines except:

• “Suffering is one very long moment.”

• “For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow.”

• “Messages of sympathy reached me from all who had still affection

  for me.”

• “Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things.”

• “There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which

  sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.”

The passage as a whole primarily appeals to:

I. ethos

II. logos

III. pathos

• I

• II

• III

• I and II

• I, II, and III

The tone of the passage as a whole can best be described as:

• plaintive

• mirthful

• sanguine

• indignant

• belligerent