Figurative Language and Poetic Devices

Which of the following is an example of personification?

• "You may trod me in the very dirt/ but still, like dust, I’ll rise."

• "Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

  How I wonder what you are."

• "The wind played hide-and-go-seek among the trees."

• "Life is a highway."

Tags

CCSS.L.6.5A

Which of the following is an example of a metaphor?

• "The day was as hot as the sun."

• "Exhaustion is a thin blanket tattered with bullet holes."

• "The stars winked in the night sky."

• "His opponent was looking for his Achilles’ heel to beat him."

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5A

CCSS.L.5.5A

CCSS.RL.5.4

CCSS.W.11-12.2D

Which of the following is an example of a simile?

• "Because I could not stop for Death –

  He kindly stopped for me."

• "The stars winked in the night sky."

• "Our life is like a thorny rose

  Not perfect, but always beautiful."

• "I am the hope and the dream of the slave."

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5A

CCSS.L.5.5A

CCSS.RL.5.4

CCSS.W.11-12.2D

Which of the following is an example of an allusion?

• "I rise, I rise, I rise."

• "It was such an obvious lie, I was surprised his nose didn’t start growing."

• "She had a photographic memory but never developed it."

Tags

CCSS.L.7.5A

CCSS.RI.8.4

CCSS.RL.8.4

“In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles, partially gnawed ice cream cones and wooden sticks of lollipops.”

• Personification

• Imagery

• Onomatopeia

• Simile

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5

CCSS.L.5.5

CCSS.L.6.5

CCSS.L.7.5

CCSS.L.8.5

“Mr. Neck storms into class, a bull chasing thirty-three red flags."

• Irony

• Onomatopeia

• Simile

• Metaphor

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5A

CCSS.L.5.5A

CCSS.RL.5.4

CCSS.W.11-12.2D

Definition: what ACTUALLY happens in the poem without looking for the deeper meaning

• Literal meaning

• Figurative meaning

Tags

CCSS.L.3.5A

CCSS.RL.3.4

Definition: the theme or symbolic, deeper meaning of a poem.

• Literal meaning

• Figurative meaning

Tags

CCSS.L.3.5A

CCSS.RL.3.4

"If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/ come gurgling from the froth-corrupted lungs"

• Personification

• Imagery

• Metaphor

• Irony

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5

CCSS.L.5.5

CCSS.L.6.5

CCSS.L.7.5

CCSS.L.8.5

“You shoot me with your words

You cut me with your eyes

You kill me with your hatefulness”

• Imagery

• Pun

• Hyperbole

• Allusion

Tags

CCSS.L.11-12.5A