Hyperbole

1. Write the definition of a hyperbole in your hyperbole square:

Hyperbole: An exaggeration of the truth for emphasis or

humorous effect.

Example:

Appetite
In a house the size of a postage stamp
lived a man as big as a barge.
His mouth could drink the entire river
You could say it was rather large
For dinner he would eat a trillion beans
And a silo full of grain,
Washed it down with a tanker of milk
As if he were a drain.

~ Sharon Hendricks
2. Read the poem “Mooses” by Ted Hughes and find the hyperbole
(between lines 20 and 25). Write it in your hyperbole square:

Mooses 20 mountain and cries:

“Where do I belong? This is

The goofy Moose, the walking no place!”

house frame,

Is lost. He turns and drags half the

In the forest. He bumps, he lake out after him

5 blunders, he stands 25 And charges the crackling

underbrush –

With massy bony thoughts He meets another Moose.

sticking out near his ears – He stares, he thinks: “It’s

Reaching out palm upwards, only a mirror!”

to catch whatever might be

10 falling from heaven – 30 “Where is the world?” he

He tries to think, groans. “O my lost world!

leaning their huge weight And why am I so ugly?

on the lectern of his front legs. And why am I so far away

from my feet?’

He can’t find the world!

15 Where did it go? What does 35 He weeps.

a world look like? Hopeless drops drip from his

The Moose droopy lips.

crashes on, and crashes into The other Moose just stands
a lake, and stares at the there doing the same.
 40 Two dopes of the deep woods.

Hyperbole

3. Answer the following questions in complete sentences about

the hyperbole you found in “Mooses.”

A. How does this hyperbole represent a huge exaggeration?

B. What image does the author create with this hyperbole?

C. Does the author use hyperbole for a humorous effect or to

emphasize something? Why do you think so?

D. Write 3 hyperboles of your own in three separate sentences.

Pre-AP, write five.
 Personification

1. Write the definition of personification in your personification

square:

Personification: When an author gives human qualities to an

animal, object, or idea.

Example:

Is the Moon Tired?

Is the moon tired? She looks so pale

Within her misty veil

She scales the sky from east to west,

And takes no rest.

Before the coming of the night

The moon shows papery white;

Before the dawning of the day

She fades away.

~ Christina Rossetti
 2. Read the poem “Ode to an Artichoke” by Pablo Neruda and find at
least five examples of personification. Write them in your
personification square.

Ode to an Artichoke
The soft-hearted artichoke put on armor, stood at attention, raised a small turret
and kept itself watertight under its scales.
Beside it, the fertile plants tangled, turned into tendrils, cattails, moving bulbs.
In the subsoil, the red-whiskered carrot slept,
the grapevine parched the shoots that wine climbs up,
the cabbage busied itself with trying on skirts,
the marjoram with making the world smell sweet,
and the gentle artichoke in the kitchen garden, equipped like a soldier,
burnished like a grenade, was full of itself.
And one day, packed with others, in big willow baskets, it marched through the
market
to act out its dream – the militia.
It was never as martial in rows as at the fair.
Among the vegetables, men in white shirts were the artichokes’ marshals,
closed ranks, commands, the explosion of a falling crate;
But then Maria shows up with her basket, fearlessly chooses an artichoke,
studies it, squints at it against the light like an egg, buys it,
dumps it into her bag with a pair of shoes, a white cabbage, and a bottle of
vinegar
till she enters the kitchen and drowns it in the pot.
And so this armored vegetable men call an artichoke ends its career in peace.
Later, scale by scale, we strip this delight and dine on the peaceful pulp
Of its green heart. ~ Pablo Neruda
 Personification

3. In your personification square, answer the following questions

in complete sentences about the examples you found in “Ode to
an Artichoke.”

A. What words compare the artichoke to a soldier or suggest

the marketplace is like a battlefield?

B. Pablo Neruda gives many of the vegetables in his poem

human-like qualities. What is your favorite and why?

C. Describe the line “the soft-hearted artichoke” both

figuratively and literally.

D. Write three sentences using personification (Pre-AP write 5).