At the beginning of Franz Kafka's The
Metamorphosis, one figure of speech that is used is
personification, which is giving an inanimate or non-human object a
human characteristic.
...Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious
dreams...
The dreams are not
anxious, though Gregor may be. Another figure of speech is found in the use of a
simile. This is when two dissimilar things with similar
characteristics are presented as the same thing, while using "like" or "as" in the
comparions.
Other travelling salesmen live like harem
women.
The salesman and the
harem women are different, but the life of leisure that Gregor imagines they share
is similar. The next figure of speech used is
hyperbole. This is when exaggeration is used to create a certain
effect.
Yes,
but was it possible to sleep peacefully through that noise which made the
furniture shake?
Obviously,
the alarm clock must be loud, but it certainly is not loud enough to make a table or
chair shake. The impression Gregor is trying to impart is that with such a loud alarm,
it makes no sense that he could sleep through the sound; we can assume this has never
happened before.
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