This question is missing the answer options. I have found the complete question online. It is the following:
Which poetic techniques are illustrated in the opening lines “I am fourteen/and my skin has betrayed me/the boy I cannot live without/still sucks his thumb/in secret”?
A. alliteration and metaphor
B. allusion and alliteration
C. apostrophe and simile
D. personification and enjambment
Answer:
The poetic techniques illustrated in the lines are:
D. personification and enjambment
Explanation:
Personification is a literary device in which human actions and characteristics are attributed to inanimate objects. We have personification in lines of the poem we are analyzing here, in "my skin has betrayed me." Of course, there is no way for someone's skin to "betray" anyone. Skin is not a sentient being. This is just a way the author has found of implying something else, with a deeper meaning.
Enjambment happens when a sentence does not end with the line, but keeps on going into the next one. That is what we have in "the boy I cannot live without/still sucks his thumb/in secret," where one sentence is spread across three lines.
