JAMB - Literature In English (2004 - No. 11)
This question is based on Literary Appreciation
'Everywhere now, freedom is on the loose And in its name, men and women slaughter One another with terrible abandon Carnage has become the means of Setting simple scores with our friends'
Okinba Launko: Pain Remembers, Love Rekindles
The dominant rhetorical device in the poem above is
'Everywhere now, freedom is on the loose And in its name, men and women slaughter One another with terrible abandon Carnage has become the means of Setting simple scores with our friends'
Okinba Launko: Pain Remembers, Love Rekindles
The dominant rhetorical device in the poem above is
innuendo
assonance
oxymoron
limerick
Explanation
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two contradictory or opposite ideas are combined to create an effect. In the lines:
"Everywhere now, freedom is on the loose
And in its name, men and women slaughter one another..."
There’s a paradox at play: "freedom", which connotes peace and liberty, is ironically associated with slaughter and carnage. This deliberate contradiction is a hallmark of oxymoron or paradoxical expression, used here to criticise how noble ideals (like freedom) are twisted into justifications for violence.
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