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Motifs
Definition of Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two contradictory terms or ideas are intentionally paired in order to make a point—particularly to reveal a deeper or hidden truth... read full definition
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two contradictory terms or ideas are intentionally paired in order to make a point—particularly to reveal... read full definition
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two contradictory terms or ideas are intentionally paired in order to... read full definition
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Gorgeous, Old, Crumbling:
In Chapter 4, Jack talks with Murray Jay Siskin, a new professor at the College-on-the-Hill. It seems Murray is not paid especially well and lives in a cheap rooming house. Murray describes his living situation to Jack in multiple humorous oxymorons:
[I live] in a rooming house. I’m totally captivated and intrigued. It’s a gorgeous old crumbling house near the insane asylum. Seven or eight boarders, more or less permanent except for me. A woman who harbors a terrible secret. A man with a haunted look. A man who never comes out of his room. A woman who stands by the letter box for hours, waiting for something that never seems to arrive. A man with no past. A woman with a past. There is a smell about the place of unhappy lives in the movies that I really respond to.
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Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—The Landlord:
In Chapter 8, Murray and Jack meet the landlord of the boarding house where Murray lives. The landlord, in Jack's perception, is so happy and healthy that he seems to be dying of it. This oxymoron is Jack's way of exaggerating just how well off the landlord seems to be, in a striking hyperbole:
Unlock with LitCharts A+We stopped on the porch long enough for Murray to tell the landlord, who was sitting there, about a dripping faucet in the second-floor bathroom. The landlord was a large florid man of such robust and bursting health that he seemed to be having a heart attack even as we looked on.
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Chapter 36
Explanation and Analysis—Most Solemn Waste of All:
In Chapter 36, Jack brings an unspecified bodily secretion to Autumn Harvest Farms. Jack and the doctors treat this "most solemn waste of all" with a strange reverence, forming an oxymoron between the gross substance and their reaction to it:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The seriousness of such an occasion is directly proportionate to the number of bodily emissions you are asked to cull for analysis. I carried with me several specimen bottles, each containing some melancholy waste or secretion. Alone in the glove compartment rode an ominous plastic locket, which I’d reverently enclosed in three interlocking Baggies, successively twist-tied. Here was a daub of the most solemn waste of all, certain to be looked upon by the technicians on duty with the mingled deference, awe and dread we have come to associate with exotic religions of the world.
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