Read the excerpt from Mark Twain's "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note". Well, I was perfectly honest and square with her; told her I hadn
't a cent in the world but just the million-pound note she'd heard so much talk about, and it didn't belong to me, and that started her curiosity; and then I talked low, and told her the whole history right from the start, and it nearly killed her laughing. What in the nation she could find to laugh about I couldn't see, but there it was; every half-minute some new detail would fetch her, and I would have to stop as much as a minute and a half to give her a chance to settle down again. Why, she laughed herself lame--she did, indeed; I never saw anything like it. I mean I never saw a painful story--a story of a person's troubles and worries and fears--produce just that kind of effect before. Which rhetorical device is demonstrated in the excerpt? A. hyperbole B. allusion C. metaphor D. oxymoron
The rhetorical device which is use in the excerpt is option D. Oxymoron.
Explanation:
Oxymoron is a contradiction of two terms, two opposites ideas. It is used to create emphasis, to draw attention to something or to create a sense of drama for the reader. In the excerpt this retorical device appears when the character says "told her I hadn't a cent in the world but just the million-pound note".
