It is an ordinary little clock, which I got as a present about two years ago. The people who gave it to me told me it cost two and a half dollars, but on inquiry at the shop where it
was bought, I learned the real price was a dollar and ten cents. Up to this time, I had been
hesitating about buying a stand for it, but after that I determined not to do so.
Since I got the clock it has been on my desk, except once or twice when its loud tick
compelled me to wrap it up in a blanket and bury it in the bottom of a drawer. My clock
worked beautifully until one night, about two weeks ago, when it stopped. I wound it up
as far as was possible, but after going for an hour it stopped again. Then I shook it, and it
went for five minutes.

In at least one hundred words, discuss how the man with the umbrella in sorrentino’s “there’s a man in the habit of hitting me on the head with an umbrella” is an example of an extended metaphor and what central theme he conveys.

Which line in this excerpt from the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald contains a simile? about half way between west egg and new york the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. this is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

How would the play the still alarm have been different if it was not a parody and the characters reacted normally to the fire in the hotel?