Thursday, November 7, 2013

In George Orwell's novel 1984 what are some examples of metaphors, similes, and irony?

Metaphors, similes, and irony occur often in George
Orwell's novel 1984, but in one sentence early in the first
chapter, all three of these techniques occur together. The sentence, actually a sentence
fragment, poses a question about Winston Smith's unattractive
surroundings:


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And the bombed sites where the plaster dust
swirled in the air and the willow herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the
places where the bombs had cleared a larger path and there had sprung up sordid colonies
of wooden dwellings like chicken
houses?



In this sentence, the
phrase "sordid colonies" is a metaphor since it compares the dwellings to colonies
without using the words "like" or "as."


A simile appears in
the phrase "dwellings like chicken houses."


An example of
irony appears when the narrator reports that "bombs had cleared a larger path." Bombs,
usually considered and intended to be destructive, have in this case ironically proved
helpful in making space for new construction.


This passage
also repeats a motif that has already been well established in the novel by this point:
the statement that "plaster dust swirled in the air" is just the latest of several
references so far to swirling grime, dirt, or dust, suggesting that the world of the
novel is unclean in more ways than one.

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