What are the rhetorical devices in "The Ice Palace"?

The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified the rigor of the bath of light.

This first quotation is the opening line of the story, and contains several rhetorical devices. For example, Fitzgerald uses a simile to compare the sunlight to "golden paint (dripping) over an art jar" and a metaphor to describe the light as "the bath of light." These devices help to create the impression of a beautiful setting. The word "golden" connotes something that is precious and valuable, and the "bath" metaphor connotes relaxation.

Farther out were lazy cotton-fields, where even the workers seemed intangible shadows lent by the sun to the earth, not for toil, but to while away some age-old tradition in the golden September fields. And round the drowsy picturesqueness, over the trees and shacks and muddy rivers, flowed the heat, never hostile, only comforting, like a great warm nourishing bosom for the infant earth.

In this second quotation, the main rhetorical device is personification. The cotton-fields are personified as "lazy," and in the final sentence, the heat in the cotton-fields is compared, using a simile, to "a great warm nourishing bosom for the infant earth." Personifying the cotton fields and the heat in this way helps to create the impression that the pace of life there is slow and peaceful. The second example of personification also gives to the cotton fields a maternal characteristic, implying that they take care of and comfort the workers, like a mother would take care of her children.

Over most of the graves lay silence and withered leaves with only the fragrance that their own shadowy memories could waken in living minds.

In this third quotation, the main rhetorical device is symbolism. The "graves" symbolize death and loss, creating a sombre, melancholy mood, which is compounded by the "withered leaves," symbolizing decay. Also in this third quotation, Steinbeck uses different senses to create a more vivid scene. He describes the sight of the "withered leaves," the "fragrance" of those leaves, and also the "silence" that lies over the graves.