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Examples Of Figurative Language In To Build A Fire

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In the short story “To Build a Fire”, the author,Jack London creates a hurried tone for the reader. The first example of the hurried tone in this short story is “So as long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood”. This quote shows the tone because it is saying that if he slows down at all, the blood in his body will stop flowing. It is saying that he has to move and move quickly to keep alive. Another example the tone is “rapidity”. This word shows the tone because it is saying that his body is freezing fast, and that he must hurry. The final example on the tone is “Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of all his body chilled as it lost it’s blood”. This quote certainly defines a hurried tone because it is saying …show more content…

One Example of figurative language that the author uses in this short story is personification in “feeding it with twigs”. This quote refers to putting wood in the fire. Personification is giving human like traits to something non human. In this quote the author is giving the fire human like traits by saying “feeding” the fire. This example of figurative language helps the reader understand the text better because by saying “feeding” it makes it sound like he is giving life to the fire and saving him. This impacts the reader's understanding on how important the fire is to the man that is building it. Another example of figurative language is “The fire was beginning to burn with strength”. This is another example of Personification. This quote is giving the fire human like characteristics by saying it is burning with “strength”. Fires don’t have strength so this is a human like characteristic. This helps the reader understand better because it is saying that the fire is bigger and is giving the man strength. This impacts the reader by using different words besides just saying “the fire was bigger”. Instead the words used makes it more interesting. A third example of figurative language in this short story is, “socks were like sheaths of iron”. This is an example of a simile and an example of a hyperbole.

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