'The earth has stopped breathing and sighed' illustrates__________

1. Analyze the question You are asked to name the figure of speech in "The earth has stopped breathing and sighed."

2. Explain the concept Quick definitions of the options:

• Bathos: a sudden, unintended drop from a serious or lofty tone to a trivial or ridiculous one.
• Paradox: a statement that seems self-contradictory but contains a hidden truth (e.g., "the child is father of the man").
• Climax: ideas arranged in rising order of importance or intensity.
• Personification: giving human qualities, actions, or feelings to non-human things, such as animals, objects, or nature.

3. Step-by-step solution

• The subject is "the earth", which is a non-living, non-human thing.
• The verbs "breathing" and "sighed" are human (or living-creature) actions. Only a living being breathes, and sighing expresses human emotion such as relief, sadness, or tiredness.
• The earth is being described as though it were a person. That is the definition of personification.

Checking the others:

• It does not drop from the serious to the silly, so it is not bathos.
• "Stopped breathing" and "sighed" are loosely in tension, but this is not a contradiction that reveals a deeper truth. The statement works by giving the earth human traits, so it is not a paradox.
• There is no rising order of ideas, so it is not climax.

4. Answer The correct option is D. personification.

5. Exam tip When a question quotes a line about nature or an object, check the verbs. If a non-human thing is doing something only humans do (breathing, sighing, weeping, laughing, speaking), the answer is almost always personification.