McKay personifies America as a woman who feeds him "bread and bitterness" and who sinks her "tiger's tooth" into his throat. By using the pronouns she and her to refer to America, McKay turns the concept of a country into a person who can cause the narrator harm even while he loves her. The effect of this personification turns the relationship between the narrator and his country into a more personal relationship, full of the conflicting emotions that come along with loving a person.
you can write about going to a river, and how you saw a group of baby turtles, had a picnic, then went star gazing, but if you want me to write an essay, feel free to message me on discord, and i happily will
Answer:
The literary technique used in all three examples is <u>metaphor</u>.
Explanation:
<u>A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes an indirect comparison. </u>Unlike a simile -- a direct comparison --, which uses the support words "as" or "like", a metaphor does not use any support words. It simply states that thing A is thing B, instead of thing A is like thing B. For example:
- Your eyes are like stars. -- simile
- Your eyes are stars. -- metaphor
The purpose of a metaphor is to attribute the characteristics of one thing to another by comparing them, even if in reality they are not similar at all. When I say someone's eyes are stars, I don't mean it literally, of course. I refer to their beautiful brightness.
<u>That is precisely what Douglass does in all three examples in the question. Slavery does not literally have bitter dregs. It is not a dark night. The vessels were not ghosts. Douglass is making these indirect comparisons to attribute characteristics of one thing to the other. On dark nights, we can feel scared, lost, hopeless. By saying slavery is a dark night, Douglass may mean slavery made him feel that way.</u>
