In his story “Parson’s Pleasure,” Roald Dahl uses a delightful blend of similes, metaphors, vivid sensory details, and irony to enhance his themes. Let’s look at how he does this.
We must first think about the story’s themes. First and foremost, we might mention the theme of deception that backfires on the deceiver, and we could also discuss the themes of greed, suspicion, pride, and pragmatism. Of course, the first of these, the theme of deception that backfires on the deceiver, is the most important, for Mr. Boggis has run a nice little scheme for quite some time, posing as a parson to purchase valuable furniture from unsuspecting country folk for little or nothing. Mr. Boggis thinks he has a good game going, and he often congratulates himself on it. He is proud of himself. Yet he is also greedy, and sometimes when the country folk are extra suspicious, like...
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Mr. Rummins, he has to put on a show to get what he wants. When Mr. Boggis finds a piece of furniture in Mr. Rummins’s house that is rare and extremely costly, he puts on his best performance yet. Only he goes too far, and Mr. Rummins and the others show their pragmatic side by cutting the piece of furniture up so that the “parson” can get what he says he wants, just the legs.
As for literary devices, Dahl includes several of them to give his story, and his themes, an added boost. Irony, for instance, dominates the end of the story when we readers know what Mr. Boggis does not. The furniture is completely ruined. We never learn his reaction, but we can imagine that the buttercups are no longer “golden sovereigns” to him as they were when he thought he made the best deal of his life. Notice the metaphor there.
We can also see similes that help set the scene, like the country spread out “like a huge green carpet,” and vivid sensory detail, as in the description of Mr. Boggis, who certainly looks his chosen part but plays it just a little too well.