Prompt: Re-read the descriptions of:
Aunt Pegg in paragraphs 2 and 3.
The children in paragraph 5.
Select words and phrases from these descriptions, and explain how the writer has created effects by using this language.
“She is a nightmare!” said my friend after we read ‘Aunt Pegg’ passage. To us, Aunt Pegg is an awful, hideous, evil woman, and we feel sorry for the children who wrote the passage. How can we feel that way? That’s the writer’s style, to describe Aunt Pegg so we can sketch her as a ‘Vile Aunt Pegg’. The writer used diction, sentence structure, and tone to make a specific style. Let’s take a look at that.
The description about Aunt Pegg started with an extreme hatred. ‘Vile’, a really strong word, gives us the first impression about Aunt Pegg as an evil ‘baby-sitter’; it makes readers turn against Aunt Pegg in the very first sentence. The next phrase ‘Leering, sneering, peering, Aunt Pegg,’ rhymes, gets readers attention and emphasizes that Aunt Pegg is an ugly woman, kind of like a witch in some ways. Once you imagine a witch, you can’t forget about ‘cat-related’ images. She would ‘pounce on us like a cat’, which showed us the infliction of violence of Aunt Pegg to the kids, but we can possibly realize that there was a bit of exaggeration mixed in to that phrase. This also connected to ‘snarl’, the action that an angry cat would do, makes us imagine Aunt Pegg has a harsh and mean voice.
