5 Steps to a 5 AP English Language 2019

Comprehensive Review—Analysis ❮ 139

— personification

— oxymoron

— metonymy

— synecdoche

— alliteration

— assonance

— consonance

As an example, here is a passage excerpted from Thoreau’s Walden, Chapter 4, “Sounds.”

I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the

sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising

higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun

for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the

petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the

iron horse was up early this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the moun-

tains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early to put the vital

heat in him and get him off. If the enterprise were as innocent as it is early! If the snow

lies deep, they strap on his snowshoes, and, with the giant plow, plow a furrow from the

mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all

the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed

flies over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by his

tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts

the elements incased in ice and snow; and he will reach his stall only with the morning

star, to start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at evening,

I hear him in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm

his nerves and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise

were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied!

Can you recognize the different examples of figurative language used in this paragraph?
List several now.

Syntax

Risking your closing the book, we are going to use the dreaded “G” word—grammar.
Grammar refers to the function of words and their uses and relationship in a sentence.
Syntax is the grammatical structure of sentences. Without syntax, there is no clear com-
munication. It is the responsibility of the author to manipulate language so that his or her
purpose and intent are clear to the reader.
Note: When we refer to syntax in the context of rhetorical analysis, we are not speak-
ing of grammatical correctness, but rather of the deliberate sentence structure the author
chooses to make his or her desired point.
We assume that you are already familiar with the basics of sentence structure and are
able to recognize and clearly construct:

• phrases;


• clauses;


• basic sentence types: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory;


• simple sentences;


• compound sentences;


• complex sentences;


• compound–complex sentences;