Oxymoron
- page 39: "Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyway."
This is definitely an oxymoron. The characters of this book use the word 'awfully' a lot in the story, but in this case it just contradicts the word next to it. How can something be awful and good at the same time? Good question because I just don't think it makes sense at all! It does to them becauase awfully is just an expression they use ofetn. To the readers, this won't make much sense since it is not used much in modern English that we hear daily. When something is awful, usually you would think it is bad, which is not good. In this phrase, it is being said that the way the Catholic Church approaches this is good but awful at the same time. Doesn't make much sense to the modern day reader, but put yourself in their time and you would probably not see the contradiction so easily.
so if you're making the argument that the oxymoron doesn't make sense, why are you using it as an example? I'm confused. Are you saying it's not an effective use?
ReplyDeleteNo I am saying it is an oxymoron that is caused by their vernacular I guess. The say awfully a lot and we don't say that today so I was pointing that out. And it is effective because it does contradict which is what an oxymoron does. Since its used a lot in the story I talked about it.
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