Question

Which of the following excerpts from The Things They Carried is an example of zeugma?

A.
Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent.
B.
By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost.
C.
[H]e went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear.
D.
Vaguely, he was aware of how quiet the day was, the sullen paddies, yet he could not bring himself to worry about matters of security.

Answer 1

The excerpt that is an example of zeugma is:

C. [H]e went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear.

Step-by-step explanation:

Zeugma can be defined as a literary device that uses one word to refer to different things in different ways. For instance, let's take the verb "run". When we say "run out the door," we are using the verb in a literal way. However, when we say "run out of time," the verb is being used in a different way, since this time it does not indicate the action of rapidly moving from a place to another by using your legs. Thus, if we use "run" in both ways at the same time, we have an example of zeugma: He ran out of time and out the door.

Having that in mind, we can easily see that we have a zeugma in option C, where the word "burden" is used to refer to the literal burden of carrying heavy things and the figurative burden of fear.