"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
Analyze this rhetorical device used in the given sentence.
The rhetorical device used in this sentence is anachronism. "Thirteen" strikes of a clock are not typical or normally possible within our regular hours' format. This sentence, from the opening of George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984," sets an eerie tone by describing a clock striking thirteen, which is a time that doesn't exist in our traditional concept of time. It puts the reader in an uncomfortable position, where a supposedly familiar setting is changed just enough to become unsettling.