The two excerpts from "A Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel Defoe that are most effective at achieving verisimilitude, creating a sense that the narrator is recording actual events, are: (Option B and E)
These excerpts provide vivid and specific details about the narrator's personal experiences during the plague, contributing to the overall sense of realism and authenticity in describing the events of that time.
Published in 1722, "A Journal of the Plague Year" presents a fictionalized account of the 1665 Great Plague of London. The narrator, a tradesman, chronicles the epidemic's progression, capturing the fear, chaos, and societal breakdown.
The story describes the city as a ghost town and goes into personal stories, expressing the emotional and physical toll.
The novel combines historical authenticity, emotional depth, and timeless insights regarding human nature and communal resilience, culminating in the plague's fall.
Defoe's tale blends simplicity and historical accuracy to create a striking reminder of human weakness and fortitude.
Full Question:
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Which two excerpts from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe are most effective at achieving verisimilitude, the sense that the narrator is recording actual events?
a) Were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the horror that everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds and fill them with surprise. (paragraph 1)
b) I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets, though not so freely as to run myself into apparent danger, except when they dug the great pit in the churchyard of our parish of Aldgate.(paragraph 2)
c) ...they began to bury in it the 6th, and by the 20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown into it 1,114 bodies when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies being then come to lie within six feet of the surface . . . (paragraph 3)
d) This may serve a little to describe the dreadful condition of that day, though it is impossible to say anything that is able to give a true idea of it to those who did not see it . . . (paragraph 6)
e) The cart had in it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapt up in linen sheets, some in rags, some little other than bare, or so loose that what covering they had fell from them in the shooting out of the cart, and they fell quite bare among the rest. . . (paragraph 10)