In paragraph 8 emerson speaks of this green ball which floats him through the heavens. what is the effect of this metaphor? how does the repetition in the rest of the paragraph contribute to this effect

When Emmerson speaks of the "green ball" that man is on, what he is doing is suggesting that the world, which is so grand in the eyes of man, is nothing more than a play thing or “ornament” that has been created by beings much more powerful than man—“angels” as he calls them.  This serves to almost belittle man and all his existence as man’s existence can only be seen as trivial.  In the rest of the paragraph, though the "green ball" metaphor is only mentioned once, he does sustain this idea through the repetition of the notion of man’s insignificance in the grand scheme of creation, which serves to magnify his intention of use of the “green ball” metaphor.

this passage has a lot of figurative language like examples are

the day we found the sharks' teeth was foggy and cool.

moisture hung in the air so thick you could almost see it sparkling in the dim sunlight.

figurative language can not be taken seriously it is just sayings.