Read the following excerpt from The Great Gatsby:


Precisely at that point[ Gatsby's smile] vanished - and i was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd.


Which literary device does this passage best exemplify?

AParadox
BSarcasm
CHyperbole
DUnderstatement

Verified Answer :

Paradox :) This is the answer for Apex English 11a

A. Paradox

In literature, a paradox is a statement that may seem silly, contradictory, and usually opposite to what is commonly believed or accepted, but that has a great potential to be true, and it may actually be.

This passage exemplifies a paradox because society normally believes that a worker on an oil rig behaves in a rough and uncouth manner, usually talking with curses or bad words and loud, and is not polite at all. However, this may be only a prejudice, as for someone's occupation does not necessarily determines how a person behaves. Someone who does hard manual labor not necessarily has to be rude, they may be, as well, elegant, and talk properly.