How does the rhetoric of this passage best support the tone? I could not escape the glow of the cat's eyes. The glow that pierced through the darkness and the whispers. The whispers that the cat had witnessed what I had done. A. The repetition of the words "glow" and "whispers" emphasizes supernatural elements, creating an eerie tone. B. The narrator creates parallelism by repeating the word "I," making him seem selfish and creating a negative tone. C. The narrator slowly builds up to a confession of guilt, which creates suspense and an expectant tone. D. The use of short, choppy sentences increases the pace of the story, creating a dark and brooding tone.

Answer: I would contend that the right answer is the A) The repetition of the words "glow" and "whispers" emphasizes supernatural elements, creating an eerie tone.

Explanation: Just to elaborate a little on the answer, it can be added that there is no direct confession of guilt by the narrator, so option C should be discarded - he or she had done something, but it is not known if he or she felt guilty about it. Most of the passage is focused on describing the impression that the cat's eyes was making on the narrator. Therefore, option B should also be discarded, since it is irrelevant. The question asks specifically for the use of rhetoric in the passage, and the main literary device here is repetition, which has been used with the goal of emphasizing the words "glow" and "whispers" and creating a mysterious and spooky tone - it is not hard to visualize the cat with his glowing, almost supernatural, eyes and to hear the whispers that, probably, were just the product of the narrator's imagination.