Figurative Language with Excerpts

Identify the figurative language in the excerpt below:

Something Sweet from Moonshine (Hesse 126)

Sheriff decided

some should find its way

into the mouths of us kids.

Bake for them, Miss Freeland, he said,

bake them cakes and cookies and pies,

cook them custard and cobbler and crisp,

make them candy and taffy and apple pandowdy.

Apple pandowdy!

These kids,

Sheriff Robertson said,

ought to have something sweet to

wash down their dusty milk.

• Alliteration

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Personification

Tags

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.2.6

Identify the figurative language in the except below:

Excerpt from The Accident (Hesse 61)

The flaming oil

splashed

onto her apron,

and Ma,

suddenly Ma,

was a column of fire.

• Simile

• Onomatopoeia

• Personification

• Metaphor

Tags

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.5.3

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

What poetic device(s) are used in the excerpt below?

Wild Boy of the Road (Hesse 59)

A boy came by the house today,

he asked for food.

He couldn't pay anything, but Ma set him down

and gave him biscuits

and milk.

He offered to work for his meal,

Ma sent him out to see Daddy.

The boy and Daddy came back late in the afternoon.

The boy walked two steps behind,

in Daddy's dust.

He wasn't more than sixteen.

Thin as a fence rail.

I wondered what

Livie Killian's brother looked like now.

I wondered about Livie herself.

• Simile

• Internal rhyme

• Repetition and simile

• Repetition and alliteration

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.5

CCSS.RL.8.4

CCSS.RL.8.10

CCSS.RL.8.5

CCSS.RL.7.4

What literary or poetic devices are used below?

Fields of Flashing Light (Hesse 31)

I heard the wind rise,

and stumbled from my bed,

down the stairs,

out the front door,

into the yard.

The night sky kept flashing,

lightning danced down on its spindly legs.

I sensed it before I knew it was coming.

I heard it,

smelled it,

tasted it.

Dust.

• Alliteration

• Personification

• Onomatopoeia

• Both Alliteration and Personification

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.5

CCSS.RL.8.4

CCSS.RL.7.10

CCSS.RL.8.10

CCSS.RL.7.4

What poetic device is used?

Breaking Drought

After seventy days

of wind and sun,

of wind and clouds,

of wind and sand,

after seventy days,

of wind and dust,

a little

rain

came.

• Internal rhyme

• Repetition

• Alliteration

• Assonance

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.5

CCSS.RL.8.4

CCSS.RL.7.10

CCSS.RL.8.10

CCSS.RL.8.5

What poetic devices are used?

Excerpt from Hope (Hesse 178)

It kept coming,

thunder booming,

lightning

kicking,

dancing from the heavens

down to the prairie,

and my father

dancing with it,

dancing outside in the drenching night

with the gutters racing,

with the earth puddled and pleased,

with my father's near-finished pond filling.

When the rain stopped,

my father splashed out to the barn,

and spent

two days and two nights

cleaning dust out of his tractor,

until he got it running again.

• Onomatopoeia

• Repetition

• Personification

• Repetition and Personification

• Onomatopoeia, Repetition, and Personification

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.5

CCSS.RL.8.4

CCSS.RL.7.10

CCSS.RL.8.5

CCSS.RL.7.4

The phrase “springs straight out of me” is an example of what literary device?

Excerpt from On Stage (pg. 13)

When I point my fingers at the keys,

the music

springs straight out of me.

Right hand

playing notes sharp as

tongues,

telling stories while the

smooth

buttery rhythms back me up

on the left.

• Alliteration

• Simile

• Personification

• Hyperbole

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.5

CCSS.RL.8.4

CCSS.RL.7.10

CCSS.RL.8.10

CCSS.RL.8.5