Question

Read this excerpt from "The Destructors" by Graham Greene and answer the question that follows: "Blackie lumbered nearer the saw and the sledge-hammer. Perhaps after all nobody had turned up; the plan had been a wild invention; they had woken wiser. But when he came close to the back door he could hear a confusion of sound hardly louder than a hive in swarm; a clickety-clack, a bang bang bang, a scraping, a creaking, a sudden painful crack. He thought; it’s true, and whistled." Why is confusion an effective choice?

Answer 1

Answer:

Because the passage itself attempts to create confusion.

Explanation:

Right after he mentions the word confusion, he compares it to a hive in swarm --this implies a sense of chaos and danger. The writer then goes further and uses numerous onomatopeias in order to achieve an even more distressing effect: all the sounds that follow are presented in a sort of sequence that create a vivid and puzzling scene in the reader's mind.