Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow : (91-99)
Shreeram Lagoo was acting in a play staged at Ambernath’s Gandhi School. We had managed to get the tickets for the play after much running around. We left the hostel quietly after eating dinner in the mess. The play started at 9.30 p.m. and it was already 9.15 p.m. Patil and I were rushing along the road to the station. Suddenly we saw Upadhyayji coming from the opposite direction. He had seen us.
‘Maharshi, where are you off to at this time ?’ he said reprovingly.
We looked at each other’s face. Suddenly Patil spoke up, ‘Sir, I have a headache. We are going to the station to have some tea or coffee. We will be back right after drinking a cup.’
‘Why, don’t you get tea and coffee in the mess ?’
‘We do, Sir. But today there wasn’t any milk in the mess. That’s why we are going to the station’, Patil improvised.
Upadhyay said, ‘Come with me. I’ll get you some coffee.’ He brought us to his home. The tickets for the play were squirming in our pockets. We couldn’t work out how to get him off our backs.
After seating us in the drawing room, he asked his wife to make the coffee and sat on the sofa across from us.
As soon as Mrs. Upadhyay entered the kitchen, I got up and said, ‘Ammaji, Warden Saheb is bothering you unnecessarily. I will make the coffee’.
She was pleased to see me. ‘Maharshi, you go sit ... I will make it.’
I went up to her and whispered, ‘Ammaji, both of us were going to the Gandhi School to see a play. Warden Saheb waylaid us and brought us here. See, here are the tickets, but he doesn’t know anything.’
Ammaji examined me from head to toe. ‘I see. Is it a good play ?’
I said, ‘Ammaji, it is very good.’
‘Then why don’t you go ?’ she said with a laugh.
‘How can we go ? Warden Saheb won’t give us permission’, I whispered.
She came into the drawing room. Listen, what kind of a warden are you ? Why don’t you let the children go and have some fun ? Go, Maharshi, but don’t be too late.
‘The tickets for the play were squirming in our pockets.’
What literary device has been used in the underlined expression.
Correct Answer :
Personification
Solution :
The correct answer is Personification.
Explanation:
1. Understanding the Underlined Expression:
In the sentence, "The tickets for the play were squirming in our pockets," human-like qualities and physical actions (squirming, moving restlessly due to anxiety or impatience) are assigned to an inanimate object (the paper tickets).
2. Analyzing the Literary Devices:
• Personification: Giving human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human things or inanimate objects. Since paper tickets cannot literally "squirm," giving them this lifelike movement is an example of personification.
• Simile: A figure of speech comparing two different things using words such as "like" or "as" (e.g., "as brave as a lion"). This is not present here.
• Alliteration: The repetition of identical initial consonant sounds in adjacent or closely connected words. This does not describe the figurative meaning used here.
• Oxymoron: A figure of speech in which contradictory terms appear side-by-side (e.g., "deafening silence"). This is not present here.
Therefore, the literary device used in the expression is Personification.
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