Question

Read the following excerpt from The Great Gatsby:

Precisely at that point[ Gatsby's smile] vanished - and i was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd.

Which literary device does this passage best exemplify?
A. Paradox
B. Sarcasm
C. Hyperbole
D. Understatement

Answer 1

The excerpt from The Great Gatsby exemplifies the literary device of understatement.

Step-by-step explanation:

The literary device that best exemplifies in the given excerpt from The Great Gatsby is understatement. Understatement is a figure of speech that presents something as less important, significant, or serious than it actually is. In this passage, the narrator describes Gatsby's smile as vanishing and reveals an abrupt change in his appearance, calling him an elegant young roughneck. The phrase 'just missed being absurd' suggests that Gatsby's speech is excessively formal.

Answer 2

A. Paradox

In literature, a paradox is a statement that may seem silly, contradictory, and usually opposite to what is commonly believed or accepted, but that has a great potential to be true, and it may actually be.

This passage exemplifies a paradox because society normally believes that a worker on an oil rig behaves in a rough and uncouth manner, usually talking with curses or bad words and loud, and is not polite at all. However, this may be only a prejudice, as for someone's occupation does not necessarily determines how a person behaves. Someone who does hard manual labor not necessarily has to be rude, they may be, as well, elegant, and talk properly.