Question

In this quote about personal essays from author Barry Lopez, which words are an oxymoron?

It is, I think, the rarest of leisure, hard work mixed with hard pleasure, to refine one's time of deep thought or light regard into the utterly self-absorbed and equally and abundantly outward-seeking shape of the personal essay—a story comprised of found fact, of analyzed emotion, of fictive memory.
(A)hard work
(B)hard pleasure
(C)deep thought
(D)outward-seeking

Answer 1

(B) hard pleasure

Step-by-step explanation:

An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two seemingly contradictory words are placed next to each other. Oxymorons can serve many purposes in a text, such as highlighting one of the concepts or forcing the reader to think carefully about the meaning of the words. In this case, the words "hard pleasure" are an example of an oxymoron, because usually pleasure is not considered to be hard.