My uncle's ambition was <u>to retire</u> and <u>to live</u> a life of leisure.
Explanation:
In grammar, parallelism (also referred to as <em>parallel structure</em> and <em>parallel construction</em>) is the use of the same or similar grammatical structure within phrases, clauses, or sentences.
Parallelism is present in the underlined part of the given sentence:<em> My uncle's ambition was </em><em><u>to retire</u></em><em> </em><em>and </em><em><u>to live</u></em><em> a life of leisure. </em>The grammatical structure that is repeated twice is the infinitive - the basic form of a verb. The infinitive can be used with or without the infinitive marker <em>to</em>. Here, it's used with<em> to</em> both times, although it could've been omitted before<em> live</em>. This is why this is an example of parallelism.
When the large cat repeats the same words 'Better wait till Martin comes' It creates excitement and curosity in the readers mind that who this Martin is? So, the effect that this repetitive words give to the story is that it pushes the story to it's most exciting part.
Explanation: The space was a kind of meadow, framed by two mansions, each so abundant with backyard paraphernalia, Nathan felt as if he’d entered the prop closet of a studio dedicated to making movies <u>about suburban American excess.</u>