Comprehension:
Read the given passage and answer the five questions that follow:-
By all measures, we are living today in the best of times, but we complain as though we are in the worst of times. Since 1800, our population has increased sevenfold, and the number of farming units has fallen sharply. Yet, we have more food now than ever before. Obesity is already a declared illness but may well become an epidemic.
Also, 80% of people lived in dire poverty; currently, it's about 8.5%. As many as 88% were illiterate then compared to 10% today. Worldwide life expectancy has also doubled since then, and in 2024, it almost touched 74. Also, in the old days, 50% newborns died before turning five; now, below 4% do. While 19th-century American households spent 58 hours at household chores, now it's 18 hours.
They may look like cockroach survivors to many of us, but our ancestors in the heavens probably think we are the overreacting type who would readily burn a house to scare a mouse. That would not be fair. The Spanish Flu of 1918 wiped out 50 million and was more devastating than COVID-19 that killed 7 million. It is because we kept complaining that epidemic control evolved and got better.
Our complaints may not have brought down global warming yet, but it has flattened the rate of carbon emission. It is now rising at 0.2% per year and not 1.9% as it did between 2005 and 2014. Rarely, if ever, did people complain in the past about steam engines and chimney smoke darkening the skies. Instead, soot and yellow smoke became lyrical at the hands of poets.
This is what democracy has done to us. It's a time machine, and once we board it and if the person at the wheel is adroit, we are in for a ride at dizzying speed. We see and taste things nobody ever did before, and like spoiled brats at a roller coaster, we keep screaming for more. The machine, however, has a built-in flaw. It has no reverse gear and cannot go back to the past, near or distant.
Identify the figure of speech used in the following sentence.
Democracy is a time machine.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → metaphor
Metaphor:
- A metaphor says that one thing is another, without "like" or "as", to bring out a likeness between them.
- This sentence: "Democracy is a time machine" calls democracy a time machine, because, as the passage explains, it carries us at dizzying speed into a new age and cannot go back to the past.
Example: Time is a thief.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: personification — Incorrect. Personification gives human qualities to a non-human thing; democracy is compared to a machine, not given human qualities.
Example: The wind whispered through the trees.
Option 2: euphemism — Incorrect. A euphemism is a mild word used in place of a harsh one; the sentence softens nothing.
Example: "He passed away" is a gentle way of saying "he died".
Option 3: apostrophe — Incorrect. An apostrophe is a direct address to an absent person or a thing; nobody is addressed here.
Example: O Death, where is thy sting?
Contrast: a metaphor says one thing is another, personification gives a thing human qualities, a euphemism softens a harsh word, and an apostrophe speaks to someone absent.