There Will Come Soft Rains: Figurative Language Practice

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock! as if it were afraid nobody would.

• Personification

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Imagery

At four o’clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls.

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Personification

• Allusion

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.

• Personification

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Imagery

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone.

• Simile

• Personification

• Metaphor

• Irony

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

• Metaphor

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Pun

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5A

CCSS.L.5.5A

CCSS.RL.5.4

CCSS.W.11-12.2D

There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped into the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner.

• Allusion

• Metaphor

• Oxymoron

• Hyperbole

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs falling upon the summer-starched grass.

• Imagery

• Idiom

• Metaphor

• Irony

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.5

CCSS.RI.6.5

CCSS.RI.7.5

CCSS.RI.8.5

CCSS.RI.9-10.5

The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click.

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Personification

• Allusion

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.

• Personification

• Metaphor

• Simile

• Alliteration

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake. But the fire was clever. It had sent flames outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps there.

• Personification

• Metaphor

• Irony

• Allusion

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3