The easiest stylistic device to identify is asimile, signaled by the use of the words "like" or "as". A simile is a comparison used to attract the reader's attention and describe something in descriptive terms.
Example:"From up here on the fourteenth floor, my brother Charley lookslike an insect scurrying among other insects." (from "Sweet Potato Pie," Eugenia Collier)
Example:The beast had eyes as bigas baseballs and teeth as longas knives.
Example:She put her hand to the boy's head, which was steaminglike a hot train.
Metonymy is similar to synecdoche, but instead of a part representing the whole, a related object or part of a related object is used to represent the whole.[2] Often it is used to represent the whole of an abstract idea.
Example:The phrase "The king's guns were aimed at the enemy," using 'guns' to represent infantry.
Example:The word 'crown' may be used metonymically to refer to the king or queen, and at times to the law of the land.
Similar to 'personification' but direct. The speaker addresses someone absent or dead, or addresses an inanimate or abstract object as if it were human.[3]
This is when the name of a character has a symbolic meaning. For example, in Dickens'Great Expectations, Miss Havisham has a sham or lives a life full of pretense. In Hawthorne'sThe Scarlet Letter, Rev. Dimmesdale metaphorically fades away (dims) as the novel progresses, while Chillingworth has a cold (chilled) heart.
A symbol may be an object, a person, a situation, an action, a word, or an idea that has literal meaning in the story as well as an alternative identity that represents something else.[4] It is used as an expressive way to depict an idea. The symbol generally conveys an emotional response far beyond what the word, idea, or image itself dictates.
Example: A heart standing for love. (One might say "It broke my heart" rather than "I was really upset")
Example: A sunrise portraying new hope. ("All their fears melted in the face of the newly risen sun.")
Anallegory is a story that has a second meaning, usually by endowing characters, objects or events with symbolic significance. The entire story functions symbolically; often a pattern relates each literal item to a corresponding abstract idea or principle. Although the surface story may have its interest, the author's major interest is in the ulterior meaning.[5]
This is when the author invokes sensory details. Often, this is simply to draw a reader more deeply into a story by helping the reader visualize what is being described. However, imagery may also symbolize important ideas in a story.
For example, inSaki's "The Interlopers", two men engaged in a generational feud become trapped beneath a fallen tree in a storm: "Ulrich von Gradwitz found himself stretched on the ground, one arm numb beneath him and the other held almost as helplessly in a tight tangle of forked branches, while both legs were pinned beneath the fallen mass." Readers can not only visualize the scene but may infer from it that it is the feud that has trapped him. Note also the diction used within the imagery: words like "forked" and "fallen" imply a kind of hell that he is trapped in.
When a word, phrase, image, or idea is repeated throughout a work or several works of literature.
For example, in Ray Bradbury's short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains", he describes a futuristic "smart house" in a post-nuclear-war time. All life is dead except for one dog, which dies in the course of the story. However, Bradbury mentions mice, snakes, robins, swallows, giraffes, antelopes, and many other animals in the course of the story. This animal motif establishes a contrast between the past, when life was flourishing, and the story's present when all life is dead.
Motifs may also be used to establish mood (as the blood motif in Shakespeare'sMacbeth), for foreshadowing (as when Mary Shelley, inFrankenstein, mentions the moon almost every time the creature is about to appear), to support the theme (as when, in Sophocles' dramaOedipus Rex, the motif of prophecy strengthens the theme of the irresistibility of the gods), or for other purposes.
In literary terminology, aparadox is an apparentcontradiction that is nevertheless somehow true.[6] Paradox can take the form of anoxymoron, overstatement or understatement. Paradox can blend intoirony.
The repetition of identical or similar sounds, usually accented vowel sounds and succeeding consonant sounds at the end of words, and often at the ends of lines of prose or poetry.[7]
For example, in the following lines froma poem byA. E. Housman, the last words of both lines rhyme with each other.
Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words.
Example: "...many aman ismaking friends with death/ Even as I speak, forlack oflove alone." (Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Sonnet 30").
Alliteration is used by an author to create emphasis, to add beauty to the writing style, and occasionally to aid in shaping the mood. It is also used to create a rhythm and musical effect on the reader's mind as well.
Formal structure refers to theforms of a text. In the first place, a text is either anovel, adrama, apoem, or some other "form" of literature. However, this term can also refer to the length of lines,stanzas, orcantos in poems, as well as sentences, paragraphs, or chapters in prose. Furthermore, such visible structures as dialogue versus narration are also considered part of formal structure.
The storyline is the chronological account of events that follow each other in the narrative. The plot includes the storyline, and is more; it includes how elements in the story interact to create complexity, intrigue, and surprise. The plot is often created by having separate threads of storyline interact at critical times and in unpredictable ways, creating unexpected twists and turns in the overall storyline.
Plot structure refers to the configuration of a plot in terms of its exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution/denouement. For example,Dickens' novelGreat Expectations is noted for having only a single page of exposition before the rising action begins, whileThe Lord of the Rings byJ. R. R. Tolkien has an unusually lengthy falling action. The plot can also be structured by the use of devices such as flashbacks, framing, and epistolary elements.
Aflashback (which is one of the most easily recognized utilization of plot structure) is a scene in writing which occurs outside of the current timeline, before the events that are occurring in the story. It is used to explain plot elements, give background and context to a scene, or explain characteristics of characters or events.
For instance, one chapter may be at present in a character's life, and then the next chapter might be the character's life years ago. The second chapter gives meaning to the first, as it explains other events the character experienced and thus puts present events in context. InKhaled Hosseini'sThe Kite Runner, the first short chapter occurs in the narrative's real-time; most of the remainder of the book is a flashback.
When there is a lengthy flashback comprising more than half of the text, aframe story is the portion outside the flashback. For example,Mary Shelley'sFrankenstein uses the adventures of a sea captain as a frame story for the famous tale of the scientist and his creation. Occasionally, an author will have an unfinished frame, such as inHenry James's "The Turn of the Screw". The lack of a finishing frame in this story has the effect of leaving the reader disoriented, adding to the disturbing mood of the story.
This is the simplest form of irony, in which the speaker says the opposite of what he or she intends. There are several forms, includingeuphemism,understatement,sarcasm, and some forms of humor.[9]
This is when the author creates a surprise that is the exact opposite of what the reader would expect, often creating humor or an eerie feeling. For example, in Steinbeck's novelThe Pearl, the reader may think that Kino and Juana would become happy and successful after discovering the "Pearl of the World", with all its value. However, their lives change dramatically for the worse after discovering it.
Similarly, in Shakespeare'sHamlet, the title character almost kills King Claudius at one point, but resists because Claudius is praying and therefore may go to heaven. As Hamlet wants Claudius to go to hell, he waits. A few moments later, after Hamlet leaves the stage, Claudius reveals to the audience that he doesn't mean his prayers ("words without thoughts never to heaven go"), so Hamlet should have killed him after all.
A way to remember the name of this term is that it describes anironic situation.
Dramatic Irony is when the reader knows something important about the story that one or more characters in the story do not know. For example, inWilliam Shakespeare'sRomeo and Juliet, the drama of Act V comes from the fact that the audience knows Juliet is alive, but Romeo thinks she's dead. If the audience had thought, like Romeo, that she was dead, the scene would not have had anywhere near the same power.
Likewise, inEdgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", the energy at the end of the story comes from the fact that we know the narrator killed the old man, while the guests are oblivious. If we were as oblivious as the guests, there would be virtually no point in the story.
The way to remember the name is that dramatic irony adds to thedrama of the story.
SeeIrony for a more detailed discussion, and definitions of other forms of irony.
Diction is the choice of specific words to communicate not only meaning, but emotion as well. Authors writing their texts consider not only a word's denotation but also its connotation. For example, a person may be described as stubborn or tenacious, both of which have the same basic meaning but are opposite in terms of their emotional background (the first is an insult, while the second is a compliment). Similarly, a bargain-seeker may be described as either thrifty (compliment) or stingy (insult). An author's diction is extremely important in discovering the narrator's tone, or attitude.
Sentences can be long or short, written in theactive voice orpassive voice, composed as simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex. They may also include such techniques as inversion or such structures as appositive phrases, verbal phrases (gerund, participle, and infinitive), and subordinate clauses (noun, adjective, and adverb). These tools can be highly effective in achieving an author's purpose.
Example: The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion. (fromNight, byElie Wiesel)
In this sentence,Wiesel uses two parallel independent clauses written in the passive voice. The first clause establishes suspense about who rules the ghetto, and then the first few words of the second clause set up the reader with the expectation of an answer, which is metaphorically revealed only in the final word of the sentence.
Ingrammar, there are twovoices: active and passive. These terms can be applied to whole sentences or verbs.Verbs also have tense, aspect and mode.There are three tenses: past, present, and future.There are two main aspects: perfect and progressive. Some grammarians refer to aspects as tenses, but this is not strictly correct, as the perfect and progressive aspects convey information other than time.There are many modes (also called moods). Some important ones are: declarative, affirmative, negative, emphatic, conditional, imperative, interrogative and subjunctive.
