Author's Style and Layers of Meaning in Cane — Quiz
Question 7 • English Language Arts 11
Read the excerpt from "Fern” in Cane. And then she sang, brokenly. A Jewish cantor singing with a broken voice. A child’s voice, uncertain, or an old man’s. Dusk hid her; I could only hear her song. It seemed to me as though she were pounding her head in anguish upon the ground. I rushed to her. She fainted in my arms. Which stylistic element most creates the mood of despair in this excerpt?
Answer
A
the use of sentence fragments between complete sentences
B
the use of commas to create pauses
C
the repetition of “brokenly” and “broken”
D
the comparison of a “child’s voice” to that of “an old man’s”