Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

The story under analysis is a very good one. It’s interesting, easy for reading and exciting. To its expressiveness contribute a wide usage of different stylistic devices.

The story is full of similes:  Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. At night my room is like the shaft of a coal mine- the most accurately describe the conditions in which the main heroine had to live. A case of implied similes are found in Clara’s description: A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words "Two dollars!". The maid is a dark-skinned woman with a bad temper, that’s why she is compared to a dark goblin;  his fatness hovered above her like an avalanche is about Mr. Hoover who was in love with Miss Leeson and hoped he had a chance to get her as his wife. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail. – describes Mrs. Parker’s state after a young doctor let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue, which is another case of implied simile in order to describe the harshness of the words which he had said to the landlady.

 It makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with. This sentence consists of three different devices. They are simile which expresses the beauty of the star comparing it to the diamond, a metaphor and a case of personification.  Other metaphors  let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys; She was sunk in a pit of blackness and a hyperbole there wasn't anything else but darkness to look at emphasis the difficulties Elsie had to deal with and how frustrated and depressed she was.

Besides, the author uses many epithets in the story: hideous and culpable poverty; blue infinity; heavy eyelids – highlight the heroine’s feelings and the hardships of her life, when incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare;  demon's smile reveal the true nature of Mrs. Parker.  

The case of asyndeton is found in the story to add some elevation to it: Tune the pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence.

There is also a case of allusion To the train of Momus are the fat men remanded which shows the reference to the Greek God of mockery.