Read the following extract from Leigh Hunt's poem, 'The Glove and the Lions' and answer the questions that follow: And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show, Valour and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.
"Leigh Hunt uses vivid sound and visual images to describe the contest between the royal beasts in the pit." Justify with close reference to the text.
Topic: Sound and visual imagery
Answer
Sound images: the lions "ramped and roared" with "horrid laughing jaws"; they "bit" and "glared"; the noise of the fight is caught in the "thunderous smother" of their blows and in the wind of their roaring.
Visual images: the beasts roll "on one another" in the sand until the arena is "a wind went with their paws"; the blood and the flying sand are made visible in "with wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, / Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother".
Together the images make the pit genuinely terrifying, so that the reader grasps exactly what the lady is asking the Count to walk into — which is the point of the description.
A justification question needs quotation, not paraphrase. Sort your evidence into two columns — what is heard, what is seen — give short quotations for each, and then explain the purpose in one sentence. Answers that describe the fight without quoting rarely pass the middle band.