Literary Examples: Figurative Language in Classic Texts for 8th Grade ELA

🧠 Quick Study Guide: Figurative Language in Classic Texts

• 💡 Simile: A comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as."
  Example: "The moon was as a ghostly galleon tossed upon stormy seas." (Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman")
• ✨ Metaphor: A direct comparison between two unlike things, stating that one is the other, without using "like" or "as."
  Example: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." (William Shakespeare, As You Like It)
• 🗣️ Personification: Giving human qualities or actions to inanimate objects or abstract ideas.
  Example: "The wind howled its mournful song through the bare trees."
• 💥 Hyperbole: An extreme exaggeration used for emphasis or effect.
  Example: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!"
• 🎶 Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds in words close together.
  Example: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."
• 🔊 Onomatopoeia: Words that imitate the natural sounds of something.
  Example: "The bacon sizzled in the pan, and the clock went tick-tock."
• 📜 Idiom: A phrase or expression whose meaning cannot be understood from the ordinary meaning of its separate words.
  Example: "It's raining cats and dogs."

📝 Practice Quiz: Figurative Language

Choose the best answer for each question based on the provided literary examples.

1. Read the excerpt from The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton:

   "I had a sick feeling in my stomach and I knew it was going to be a long night. I was scared rotten."

   What type of figurative language is "scared rotten"?

   A) Simile
   B) Metaphor
   C) Hyperbole
   D) Personification

2. From William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

   "But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!"

   What type of figurative language is "Juliet is the sun"?

   A) Simile
   B) Metaphor
   C) Alliteration
   D) Onomatopoeia

3. Consider this line from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens:

   "The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms."

   Which phrase contains personification?

   A) "The fog came pouring in"
   B) "at every chink and keyhole"
   C) "so dense without"
   D) "mere phantoms"

4. From Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem (Dream Deferred)":

   "Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?"

   What type of figurative language is "like a raisin in the sun"?

   A) Metaphor
   B) Simile
   C) Idiom
   D) Hyperbole

5. In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven":

   "And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain"

   The word "rustling" is an example of what type of figurative language?

   A) Alliteration
   B) Metaphor
   C) Onomatopoeia
   D) Personification

6. From Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:

   "The old man sweat and swore, and Tom helped him."

   What literary device is most evident in the phrase "sweat and swore"?

   A) Simile
   B) Alliteration
   C) Onomatopoeia
   D) Hyperbole

7. From the poem "Fog" by Carl Sandburg:

   "The fog comes / on little cat feet. / It sits looking / over harbor and city / on silent haunches / and then moves on."

   What two types of figurative language are most clearly present in the lines "The fog comes on little cat feet"?

   A) Simile and Alliteration
   B) Metaphor and Personification
   C) Simile and Personification
   D) Hyperbole and Metaphor