Identify and explain two elements of the author's style in the exerpt "My Watch" by Mark Twain.

You might like to analyse the humour in this short
excerpt. There is a sense in which, as in all of his fiction, Twain uses hyperbole or
deliberate exaggeration to great effect. Perhaps the most obvious--and
hilarious--example of this comes at the end of the essay as, despairing of every getting
his watch properly fixed, the narrator takes it to a watchmaker whom he identifies as
being a former steamboat, who was "not a good engineer, either." His advice, that treats
the watch as if it were a malfunctioning steam boat, is hilarious, but note how the
narrator responds to this:

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I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at
my own expense.

Of course,
the speaker would not have committed murder, but this throwaway line helps to convey his
frustration and anger at the ineptness of the engineer and how he is unable to get the
watch fixed.

Secondly, you might like to consider how the
watch is personified to emphasise the way in which something is wrong with it. Note how,
after the first "repair," the watch is described as being a sick
human:

Within
the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in
the shade.

This
personification gives the watch its own distinct character and also helps to convey the
way in which it sped up so greatly.