Question

Read the excerpt from "Choice: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Alice Walker.

We loved the land and worked the land, but we never owned it; and even if we bought land, as my great-grandfather did after the Civil War, it was always in danger of being taken away, as his was, during the period following Reconstruction.





Which rhetorical device does the author use in this excerpt?

antithesis
metonymy
synecdoche
zeugma

Answer 1

synecdoche

Step-by-step explanation:

The rhetorical device used in this excerpt from "Choice: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." by Alice Walker is synecdoche. Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole, or the whole is used to represent a part. In this excerpt, the land is used to represent the ownership of the land. The author writes that "we loved the land and worked the land, but we never owned it," implying that the people she is speaking of did not have ownership over the land they lived on and worked. This is an example of synecdoche because the land represents ownership, and the use of the land in this way allows the author to convey the idea of ownership without directly mentioning it.