Question
Just after we turned 16, my best friend and I got jobs at our favorite shoe store. On our first day we were in the storage room, gazing up at the racks of merchandise we would spend the next several weeks hauling out to the floor for customers.
My friend promptly knocked a cart into the rack and sent a small stack of boxes careening into the wall. He moved to clean up the mess, but I quickly stopped him. On the way in, he’d nearly tripped over his own feet. Enough was enough.
“Please, let me,” I said. “You’re having a clumsy day. Let’s not make things worse.”
He laughed as I picked the boxes up and spun to put them back on the shelf. But as I spun, my hip caught the cart hard. It bounced into the rack again—and this time, the rack collapsed entirely. Boxes tumbled, shoes went everywhere, and soon we were staring at a huge mess.
“At least we didn’t make it worse,” my friend said. “That would have been bad.”
Use the story excerpt to answer the question.
What narrative technique does the writer use to create an effect?
(1 point)
Responses
verbal irony
verbal irony
figurative language
figurative language
vivid description
vivid description
dramatic irony
My friend promptly knocked a cart into the rack and sent a small stack of boxes careening into the wall. He moved to clean up the mess, but I quickly stopped him. On the way in, he’d nearly tripped over his own feet. Enough was enough.
“Please, let me,” I said. “You’re having a clumsy day. Let’s not make things worse.”
He laughed as I picked the boxes up and spun to put them back on the shelf. But as I spun, my hip caught the cart hard. It bounced into the rack again—and this time, the rack collapsed entirely. Boxes tumbled, shoes went everywhere, and soon we were staring at a huge mess.
“At least we didn’t make it worse,” my friend said. “That would have been bad.”
Use the story excerpt to answer the question.
What narrative technique does the writer use to create an effect?
(1 point)
Responses
verbal irony
verbal irony
figurative language
figurative language
vivid description
vivid description
dramatic irony
Answers
GPT-4o mini
The narrative technique the writer uses to create an effect is **verbal irony**. This is evident in the exchange between the characters where they acknowledge that they didn’t make things worse, despite the fact that the situation escalated into a bigger mess. The humor lies in the contrast between what the characters say and what actually happens.