Question Details

The snow was falling, and the Cat's fur was stiffly pointed with it, but he was imperturbable. He sat crouched, ready for the death-spring, as he had sat for hours. It was night but that made no difference, all times were as one to the Cat when he was in wait for prey. Then, too, he was under no constraint of human will, for he was living alone that winter. Nowhere in the world was any voice calling him; on no hearth was there a waiting dish. He was quite free except for his own desires, which tyrannized over him when unsatisfied as now. The Cat was very hungry. almost famished, in fact. For days the weather had been very bitter...and the Cat's long hunt had availed him nothing. But he waited with the inconceivable patience and persistency of his race; besides, he was certain. The Cat was a creature of absolute convictions, and his faith in his deductions never wavered. The rabbit had gone in there between those low - hung pine boughs. The Cat had seen her enter...so he sat down and waited, and he waited still in the white night, listening angrily to the north wind starting in the upper heights of the mountains with distant screams, then swelling into an awful crescendo of rage, and swooping down with furious white wings of snow like a flock of fierce eagles into the valleys and ravines. The Cat was on the side of a mountain, on a wooded terrace. Above him, a few feet away towered the rock ascent as steep as the wall of a cathedral. He had often looked with wonder at the rock, and miauled bitterly and resentfully as man does in the face of a forbidding Providence. At his left was the sheer precipice. Behind him...was the frozen perpendicular wall of a mountain stream. Before him was the way to his home. When the rabbit came out she was trapped; her little cloven feet could not scale such unbroken steeps. So the Cat waited. The tangle of trees and bushes clinging to the mountain-side with a stern clutch of roots, the prostrate trunks and branches, the vines embracing everything with strong knots and coils of growth, had a curious effect, as of things which had whirled for ages in a current of raging water, only it was not water, but wind, which had disposed everything in circling lines of yielding to its fiercest points of onset. It was as if ice needles pricked his skin through his beautiful thick fur, but he never faltered and never once cried. He had nothing to gain from crying, and everything to lose; the rabbit would hear him cry and know he was waiting.
[Excerpts from a Short story, „The Cat‟ by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman]

The passage has been adorned with numerous figure of speeches. Which of the following combinations is correct?

Options

A

Irony and Sarcasm

B

Alliteration and Pun

C

Simile and Personification

D

Metaphor and Onomatopoeia

Show Answer

Correct Answer :

Option C

Simile and Personification

Solution :

The correct answer is Simile and Personification.


Let us analyze the figures of speech present in the passage:


1. Simile: A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things using words such as "like" or "as". In the passage, we can observe clear similes:

- "...swooping down with furious white wings of snow like a flock of fierce eagles into the valleys and ravines." — Here, the wind carrying snow is directly compared to a flock of fierce eagles using the word "like".

- "...towered the rock ascent as steep as the wall of a cathedral." — Here, the steepness of the rock ascent is compared to the wall of a cathedral using "as...as".


2. Personification: Personification gives human attributes, emotions, or intentional actions to non-human entities, objects, or nature. Examples from the text include:

- The north wind is described as "listening angrily", "swelling into an awful crescendo of rage", and attacking with "furious white wings".

- The desires of the cat "tyrannized over him".

- The trees and bushes are described as "clinging to the mountain-side with a stern clutch of roots".


Therefore, the combination of Simile and Personification correctly identifies the predominant figures of speech used in the text.

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