Figurative language and literary devices: identifying metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole, imagery, symbolism, and irony, and explaining the effect each device creates (not just naming it), across literary passages and poems on the Virginia EOC Reading test.

What this skill is asking

Figurative language and literary devices run through every literary passage and poem on the Virginia EOC Reading test, and the skill the test rewards is not naming a device but explaining its effect. Anyone can label a metaphor; the marks are in saying what the metaphor does to meaning or feeling. The test asks this with multiple-choice questions ("what is the effect of this comparison"), with hot-text items ("click the example of personification"), and with effect questions across prose and poetry. This page covers the devices the EOC tests most, the difference between identifying and analyzing, and how to reason from a device to its effect. The transferable skill is reading figurative language as a tool the writer uses for a purpose.

The core devices, defined by what they do

Know the devices, but learn each one paired with its effect.

The form tells you which device it is: a comparison word ("like", "as") makes it a simile, while a direct equation makes it a metaphor. But the EOC question almost always pushes past the label to the effect. The right answer states what the device achieves here, sharpens, exaggerates, sets a mood, carries an idea, while the distractors either misname the device or attach an effect it does not produce.

Identifying is half the task; analyzing is the other half

This is the same habit you use for plot structure and for poetry: identify the choice, then state its effect. It is worth practicing on every passage you read, even outside a test, because it becomes automatic. When a question offers four options that all correctly name the device, the answer is the one whose stated effect the passage actually produces.

Reasoning about symbol and irony

Try this

Q1. What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor? [Recall]

• Cue. A simile compares two things using "like" or "as" ("brave as a lion"); a metaphor states one thing is another directly ("her words were daggers"), with no comparison word.

Q2. A poem describes hope as "the thing with feathers" that perches in the soul. Name the device and its effect. [Short explanation]

• Cue. Metaphor: hope is presented as a feathered creature (a bird). The effect is to make an abstract feeling concrete and gentle, suggesting hope is alive, light, and able to sing even in hard times. The image carries the meaning.