Interactive Quiz created by Nancy Roberts Garrity at St. John Fisher School
NOTE: In order to play this game, it must be viewed in slide show (F5)
Directions: Read the example on each slide. Then click on
the button that identifies the type of literary technique.
“Three times Della counted it.”
inversion
inference
imagery
Mr. James Dillingham Young
The letters of “Dillingham” looked blurred,
as though they were thinking seriously of
contracting to a modest and unassuming D.
inference
imagery
personification
She stood by the window and looked out dully at a
gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard.
inversion
personification
repetition
In “The Gift of the Magi,” the narrator
refers to Della’s hair as a “brown cascade.”
synecdoche
metonymy
personification
The next two hours tripped by on rosy wings.
personification
hyperbole
paradox
“Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable
as a setter at the scent of quail.”
simile
metaphor
personification
Jim had an expression on his face that Della could not read:
“It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror,
nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for.”
inversion
irony
repetition
Out of his trance Jim
seemed quickly to wake.
inversion
inference
imagery
White fingers and nimble tore
the string and paper.
personification
synecdoche
metonymy
“Della leaped up like
a little singed cat.”
metaphor
paradox
simile
In the conclusion, the narrator describes Della
and Jim as “two foolish children” yet he appears
to contradict himself by saying that they “were
the wisest of all who give gifts.”
paradox
oxymoron
understatement
At the end of the story, the
reader is surprised because
the events are contrary to
what one might expect.
What is this called?
verbal irony
irony of the situation
dramatic irony