Question

Based on this excerpt, what can readers infer about the stories the fishermen were told about the barbarians?

Answer 1

Answer:

The stories are exaggerations.

Excerpt:

Read the excerpt from Heart of a Samurai and then answer the question.

Eleven eyes. When at last he dared to look up, what he noticed was their eyes. Each pair a different color: green as a stormy sea, blue as the sky, black as night, or brown as his own. One man had only one eye, and that one as gray as a cloudy day. The other eye was covered with a patch.

There did not seem to be any tails, horns, or fangs among them. There were some alarmingly hairy faces and plenty of big noses, though!

Six big noses, in fact: one long and hooked, two long and straight, one squashed and wide, one turned up at the end, and another as big and red as a radish.

Explanation:

Exaggeration is a term for a figure of speech. It creates a worse, or better, image or situation than it really is and used to highlight points and add emphasis to a feeling, an idea, an action, or a feature. When exaggeration is being used in writing, it allows one to describe something in a heightened way to make it more remarkable.

From the excerpt, we can see that the way the barbarians were being described to the fishermen was exaggerated. One example is:  There were some alarmingly hairy faces and plenty of big noses, though!

Therefore, readers can infer that the stories are exaggerations.