Literary Devices

And so we come to the crux of literary analysis. All writers will—either consciously or subconsciously—use literary devices in their work. Students may be familiar with so-called figurative language, such as simile and metaphor. These are examples of literary devices, in other words, linguistic constructions that serve a literary purpose. The frame story we discussed in the Dostoyevsky piece is also a literary device, and the purpose it serves—to parallel the relationship between Ivan and Alyosha with that between the Inquisitor and Jesus—is also a literary device.

One aspect of literary analysis is being able to pick up on the use of literary devices almost subconsciously. In a reading of Macbeth, an experienced reader will certainly be able to discern that Macbeth is a tragic hero, for example. Literary devices such as“tragic hero”all have very specific definitions, and it will serve you very well to learn these definitions by heart. Knowing such terms offers students an edge in competitiveness, not merely because students can then write English at a higher skill level, but also save them time as they refrain from racking their brains for whatever literary device on which they' d like to draw.

Here is a beginner' s list—again, by no means exhaustive—of literary devices：

Allegory

An allegory is a story that represents another story or metaphorical message. The Tortoise and the Hare is an example of an allegory; it describes how being humble like the Tortoise is a path to victory against arrogant foes like the Hare. Allegories do not have to be long-winded or elaborate. In fact, they are often somewhat short.

Alliteration

Alliteration refers to a situation when the author uses words that begin with the same sound or letter. Whether it is the consonant sound or a specific vowel group, alliteration involves creating a repetition of similar sounds in the sentence. Alliteration can create a sort of contrived rhythm in the text, which is why it is more prevalent in poetry rather than prose.

Allusion

An allusion is a figure of speech whereby the author refers to something outside the text in a brief manner. It is up to the reader to make a connection to the subject being mentioned. In other words, allusions are indirect references. For example, the common saying of Et tu, Brute? is an allusion to Julius Caesar, a play by Shakespeare.

Analogy

An analogy is a literary device that helps readers establish a relationship based on similarities between two concepts. Essentially, this draws on the tendency of the mind to make connections between what it already knows and what it is learning. J. J. Thomson' s wildly inaccurate“plum pudding”model of atomic structure, which he proposed in 1904, is an example of an analogy. Even though he made an inaccurate comparison, Thomson was trying to relate an unfamiliar concept to a real thing he understood.

Anecdote

Anecdotes are personal accounts or stories. More often than not, they are humorous and relatable, but this casual or lighthearted tone is usually a vehicle by which they carry an important message. You may have heard of the term anecdotal evidence; this merely refers to evidence that statistics or figures cannot corroborate, and usually takes the form of personal stories.

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is a process by which an author ascribes human qualities to non-human objects. Often, this can help to make the non-human object more relatable to the obviously human audience. Oscar Wilde, in his fairy tale The Nightingale and the Rose, gives the titular Nightingale very human qualities that make her relatable to the reader.

Antithesis

Antitheses are direct opposites—light and darkness, love and hatred, heat and cold. Whether they are words or phrases of the same sentence, an antithesis is used to create a stark contrast using two divergent elements that come together to create one uniform whole. An antithesis plays on the complementary property of opposites to create one vivid picture. The purpose of using an antithesis in literature is to create a balance between opposite qualities and lend a greater insight into the subject.

Aphorism

Aphorisms are sayings that have an air of religiosity or sagacity to them. They tend to be short statements but can often be longer in more modern cases. Love thy neighbor is an example of a short aphorism from the Christian tradition. Religious texts often include many aphorisms, and you can often distinguish an aphorism by how easy it is to quote; it encapsulates an idea in a concise format that readers can easily call to mind.

Archetype

Archetypes are generally prototypical ideas or concepts. For example, the story of Oedipus in Greek mythology has somehow become a very popular archetype of stories in which the protagonist is fated to slay his father and marry his mother.

Assonance

Assonance refers to the repetition of vowel sounds in a text. Like consonance, assonance can give a rhythm to a text, which is the reason for its relative abundance in poetry over prose. But prose, too, can use assonance to great effect.

Authorial Intrusion

Authorial intrusions are essentially the prose version of asides in theater. They involve narrative detachments where the author breaks the narrative and writes directly to the reader (assuming that the text is not already addressed to the second-person reader like this one). Authorial Intrusion establishes a one to one relationship between the writer and the reader where the latter is no longer a secondary player or an indirect audience to the progress of the story but is the main subject of the author' s attention.

Cacophony

The word cacophony literally means harsh noise or noises. In literature, words that sound harsh when read aloud compose cacophony. It can create a discordant effect in the text, or even affect a sense of horror or fear. As a result, because of its varied effects, cacophony can have uses in prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction alike.

Caesura

Caesura refers to a Latin verb meaning to cut. In literature, caesura refers to a sentence or line being cut by punctuation. In poetry, it refers to how a line might end with a comma or other forms of punctuation, and in prose, it refers to how an author might divide a line by using a comma in one place rather than elsewhere. This can emphasize particular parts of the sentence at the expense of another part without resorting to the awkwardness of using constructions like passive voice.

Circumlocution

Circumlocution is a form of writing where the writer uses exaggeratedly long and complex sentences in order to convey a meaning that could have otherwise been conveyed through a shorter, much simpler sentence. Circumlocution involves stating an idea or a view in an indirect manner that leaves the reader guessing and grasping at the actual meaning. Be careful in identifying this literary device, however. Always ask yourself whether the author is deliberately circumlocuting for a purpose or is simply inept at using English words.

Conflict

Conflicts are essential to any literary work. We can best understand them as the incongruence between an ideal state and the existing state. The conflict is a discord that can have external aggressors or can even arise from within the self. It can occur when the subject is battling his inner discord, at odds with his surroundings or it may be pitted against others in the story.

Connotation

Connotation refers to the thoughts or ideas a reader associates with a word. Connotation distinguishes itself from denotation in that connotation refers to what a reader will not find in a dictionary, whereas denotation refers to the opposite. Connotation is how we know a word has a positive or negative feeling. We might use stimulate rather than provoke, for example, if we wanted to create a positive connotation. This connotative association is also why you should not abuse a thesaurus to find synonyms; you might not be fully aware of the connotations of some words.

Consonance

Consonance refers to repetition of sounds in quick succession produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase. The repetitive sound is often found at the end of a word. Consonance is the opposite of assonance, which implies repetitive usage of vowel sounds.

Denotation

Denotation refers to the dictionary definition or literal meaning of a word.

Deus ex Machina

Deus ex Machina is a controversial literary device. It refers to the incidence where an implausible concept or character is brought into the story in order to make the conflict in the story resolve and to bring about a pleasing solution. It is generally controversial because it shows that the author has no other recourse than to introduce an omnipotent force of good to solve a contrived and implausibly complicated problem.

Diction

Don' t let anyone tell you otherwise. Diction is simply the word choice peculiar to an author. This is a troublesome device because it is so simple. We will have a greater look at this in depth in Part Three.

Ekphrastic

Ekphrastic writing(or ekphrastia)is generally a form of poetry—but not necessarily—in which the poet or author describes another, most likely visual, form of art.

Epilogue

You may encounter epilogues at the ends of novels or poems. They serve as an additional sort of reflection or conclusion on the events of the story. They may have additional information on the fates of the characters. It is not always clear why an author would choose to use an epilogue rather than simply closing the book with the last chapter; perhaps there is a sort of narrative divide that would make the epilogue very distinct from the last chapter. In any case, there is most likely significance behind epilogues.

Epithet

Epithets are titles or alternate ways of referring to people or objects. They emphasize or embody a particular aspect of that person or object. Epithets are remarkable in that they become a part of common parlance over time. These descriptive words and phrases can be used to enhance the persona of real and fictitious places, objects, persons and divinities. For example, Shiva, a god of Hinduism, has an epithet of“The Destroyer”. This title emphasizes Shiva' s power to destroy and change. In the same way, Dwayne Johnson, the wrestler and actor, used to go by“The Rock”. This epithet is more than fitting for Johnson' s imposing and muscular figure.

Euphemism

Euphemism—which uses the Greek root eu, meaning“good”—is the practice of using milder language to describe harsher phenomena. You may have seen in older SAT practice tests an example that compares the direct, harsh way of firing an employee to the euphemistic saying of effecting a separation between the employee and the company. This is also the reason behind our common use of passing away in place of dying.

Euphony

Euphony literally refers to sweet or beautiful sounds. The use of euphony is predominant in literary prose and poetry, where poetic devices such as alliteration, rhyme and assonance dominate the text to create a pleasant sound once a speaker recites the poem aloud. Euphony is the opposite of cacophony, which refers to the creation of unpleasant and harsh sounds by using certain words and phrases together. This literary devices is based on the use and manipulation of phonetics in literature.

Faulty Parallelism

In literature, the term“parallelism”refers to the practice placing together similarly structure related phrases, words or clauses. Parallelism involves placing sentence items in a parallel grammatical format wherein nouns are listed together, specific verb forms are listed together and the like. When one fails to follow this parallel structure, it results in faulty parallelism. The failure to maintain a balance in grammatical forms is known as faulty parallelism wherein similar grammatical forms receive dissimilar or unequal weight.

Flashback

Flashbackis where the author depicts past events as a narrative break to the present. This is most common in fiction where authors will use it to establish characters' backstory, but some nonfiction pieces will include flashbacks as well. Flashbacks, as narrative breaks, can be effective, but most writers will tend not to abuse them.

Foil

Foils are characters that contrast with each other. For example, however briefly he appears, Fortinbras in Shakespeare' s Hamlet is a foil to the eponymous protagonist, because they demonstrate opposing character traits—Hamlet is indecisive and brooding, whereas Fortinbras is resolute and active. This is also more common in fiction because the writer can create characters that clash with each other very easily. Of course, setting up characters as foils in a piece of nonfiction writing can also provide a powerful dynamic for a narrative.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is the process by which an author hints at future events through subtle messages in the text. For example, in an early scene in Wole Soyinka' s Death and the King's Horseman, Elesin, the protagonist, utters“Life is honour. It ends when honour ends.” This line, seemingly insignificant and merely reflective of Elesin' s high status in Yoruban society, actually foreshadows Elesin' s fate at the end of the play.

Hubris

The modern definition of hubris is merely overwhelming pride. However, in the Greek tradition where the term originates, hubris was much more severe. Individuals full of hubris were so arrogant that they lost touch with reality and considered themselves better than the Greek gods—which prompted the often petty and jealous gods to inflict karmic punishment on that person. For example, Greek mythology contends that Arachne, a mortal woman, proved herself a better weaver than the goddess Athena. Yet Arachne' s arrogance—and indeed hubris—proves to be her undoing, as the vengeful goddess turned her into the first spider. All spiders, according to Greek mythology, are descended from Arachne—and that story is how we began using the word arachnid.

Hubris is somewhat less common now as a device, with many mainstream authors shying away from depicting divine beings as jealous or petty. It is more noticeable in works such as Mary Shelley' s Frankenstein, where the titular doctor plays at God by experimenting with life.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is where the author exaggerates a claim to a dramatic extent. Hungry children will often say things like the very cliché“I could eat a horse!”—yet that is not hyperbole because it is not quite beyond the realm of belief. Hyperbole would be a claim so exaggerated and dramatic that the audience has no mental image or comprehension of it:the heat of a thousand suns, for example, would be hyperbole because it is difficult for us to understand how much heat one sun emits, let alone a thousand.

This is also more common infiction because nonfiction works generally deal with the real world and so tend not to make claims that audiences would not understand.

Imagery

Imagery is so important that I have written an entire section on it later in this book. Imagery consists of the mental picture and associated ambiance a reader forms as he reads a text. Descriptive language will generally invoke imagery, but the language must be extraordinarily vivid. Otherwise, attempts at imagery will only sound or read like contrived jumbles of words that make little cohesive sense.

Internal Rhyme

Most common in poetry, internal rhyme occurs when words rhyme within one line of verse. This creates a sort of substructure within the poetry, and can allow the poet a greater degree of freedom to work with structures and rhythm. If internal rhyme divides the syllables of a line of poetry perfectly in half, that line of poetry almost becomes cleaved in half rhythmically while retaining its form as a single line of text.

Inversion

Inversion is where the author reverses the order of verb and subject. In French, inversion is a common way of asking questions, but in English, it is generally a sign that the text in which it appears is somewhat old. Hastened he to the battlefield would be an example of inversion; as you might be able to deduce, he hastened to the battlefield would be the regular, uninverted form of that construction. Aside from archaic instances, inversion is also rather common in poetry, mostly for establishing rhythm or rhyme.

Irony

Irony is one of the most misused words in the English language, but generally it refers to the disconnect between how something appears and what it indicates or means.Dramatic irony is, as its name implies, most common in drama, and describes a situation in which the audience is privy to information that a character lacks. I refer again to Hamlet:in one scene, Hamlet sees his uncle King Claudius praying, but he is too distant to hear Claudius admit to killing Hamlet' s father. The audience, however, hears Claudius reveal his guilt. This is an example of dramatic irony:Hamlet does not know the crucial information that Claudius just revealed to the audience.

Another, more general, example of irony would be the word abbreviation and what it describes. Abbreviation consists of thirteen letters and is quite a long word, but it actually refers to shortening words or phrases. This is ironic, because you would expect a short word to refer to that process rather than a long one like abbreviation. This incongruity between our expectations and reality is an example of situational irony.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition, as a word, might look frightening. What self-respecting, easily understood word contains both J and X? However, juxtaposition simply indicates a situation in which two contrasting ideas coexist in proximity. For example, a poem that refers to fire every odd-numbered line and ice every even-numbered line would constantly juxtapose the concepts of fire and ice, heat and cold. This creates a sort of conflict and almost always relates to a deeper message.

Litotes

George Orwell actually warned against using litotes, or what he called“double negatives”in his essay Politics and the English Language, but litotes (there is no specific singular form of the word! )are not absolutely the enemies of English that Orwell argued they were. Litotes are, in simplest terms, constructions in which the author states something using either a double negative or a denial of a negative. Since that seems vague, I' ll illustrate it using examples：

I' m not feeling unwell is an example of the first form of litotes, in which the writer uses two negatives（not unwell）. My car isn' t a deathtrap is an example of the second form, where the writer denies a negative description（isn't a deathtrap, deathtrap being an obviously negative word）. Both litotes examples are understatements and leave a message intentionally vague, because not feeling unwell doesn' t mean feeling well-English isn' t as precise as math where two negative signs will make something positive. Not feeling unwell can mean anything from feeling average to feeling like a demigod. Similarly, a car that isn' t a deathtrap could indicate a car that is in poor condition but not so poor that it poses harm to the driver, or it could indicate a car that' s absolutely state-of-the-art.

You see, then, that litotes leaves interpretations intentionally vague. Authors will use this to make their writing more vague if they see a need to do so. Often, this makes the readers rely on their own assumptions as to what is happening, so the author can introduce an unexpected twist or turn of events.

Malapropism

Malapropism is the intentional misuse of words in the place of words that sound similar but have entirely different meanings. This is different from writing that is simply poor, because malapropism has a purpose. In Lewis Carroll' s Alice in Wonderland, for example, the denizens of Wonderland respond to Alice's questions in a way that answers completely different questions than those she asks. This indicates how different Wonderland is from Alice' s world. Or, if a less educated police officer in, perhaps, a satirical work of fiction, were to report to his superior that he“comprehended an auspicious person”instead of“apprehended a suspicious person”, the author might have intended for those examples of malapropism to cast a negative light on policemen.

Metaphor

Metaphors are very prominent in all forms of literature. A metaphor is a direct comparison between two objects, usually in the form of A is B. For example, you may have read S. E.. Hinton's The Outsiders in English class in high school. Ponyboy and Johnny, two characters in the novel, read a poem by Robert Frost:“Nothing Gold Can Stay”. The poem includes a line that states“Nature's first green is gold”—Frost uses this as a metaphor for how the beauty of nature, and Hinton adapts this meaning in her novel.

As a rule, when you see an author describe something as something else completely different, you can generally certain the author is using a metaphor. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, in a 1945 speech discussing the atomic bomb, quotes the Bhagavad Gita and says, “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” Obviously Dr. Oppenheimer didn' t actually become death, but uses become in a metaphorical sense to illustrate the total destructive force of the atomic bomb.

In the same way, authors usually metaphor to ascribe qualities of the latter concept to the former concept without being too overt or verbose. “I am become death”, as Dr. Oppenheimer used it, invokes a very powerful feeling of dread. This is generally the effect, or intention, behind most examples of metaphor.

Metonymy

Metonymy is a type of figurative language by which an author refers to something not by the name of that thing but by an aspect or attribute of the thing. For example, when we say“suits”as in the title of the TV drama, we aren't actually referring to suit jackets and slacks but rather the people in them—lawyers, business executives, and the like. Referring to the White House in place of the President of the United States would be an example of metonymy, because the White House is something we mentally associate with the President of the United States.

Mood

The mood of a work of literature is the feeling or ambiance the author invokes in the text through the language he uses. If an author uses many depressing words in a text,those words will create a depressing mood in your mind as you read the text. Similarly, an author can achieve the same effect with any mood he chooses as long as he uses words to match that mood.

Motif

Motifs are any ideas or concepts that recur in the text. These can achieve stylistic effects or create a tone for the text. In Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, for example, crows play a central role as one of the motifs of the novel.

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia refers to sound words, that is, words that sound like what they describe. The bang of a gunshot is a good example of onomatopoeia.

Oxymoron

Oxymoron refers to a self-contradicting phrase. A common one we tend not to think about is“pretty ugly”—as in, “I received a pretty ugly mark on my English test”. Another rather common oxymoron is“tough love”. Literary uses of oxymoron are a little more deliberate and thought-out, and usually convey a deeper significance when an author uses them.

Paradox

A paradox is a set of statements or ideas that seem to contradict each other, similar to oxymoron. For example：

There is almost always significance in how an author uses paradox. In Sophocles'Oedipus Rex, the protagonist Oedipus sets out to avoid a horrific prophecy in which he slays his father and marries his mother, yet he does exactly that by the end of the play. This paradox—a self-fulfilling prophecy—is the defining aspect of the play.

Pathetic Fallacy

Pathetic fallacy happens when the author writes the environment of the text in a way that it reflects the emotion of a character. If a character is in mourning, for example, the author may write that it was raining, that there was a thunderstorm, or something else that similarly reflects the sorrow of the character. Take note, however, that some critics have called pathetic fallacy an“accidental”device, in that authors don't intend to write in this way but rather do so unconsciously due to a psychological association between certain words and weather phenomena.

Periodic Structure

Periodic structure refers to the author purposefully moving the elements of a sentence around, such that, for example, the predicate or subject only comes at the very end of a sentence. This is not a strict definition but rather a hypothetical example of how it may appear. Usually, after the writer reveals the missing element, the reader experiences a sense of shock; as a result, periodic structure is very much an intentional device. Due to the unorthodox grammar involved, periodic structure is usually prominent in poetry rather than prose, and almost always more fiction than nonfiction.

Personification

Personification is, most generally, describing nonhuman things in a way that makes them seem human. “The clouds wept and the wind mourned”, for example, uses verbs generally reserved for human beings to refer to weather phenomena.

Plot

Plot, too, is a literary device—even though you may not consider it as such. In fact, the intricacies of the plot of any self-respecting piece of fiction are sufficient analysis material for many essays themselves. Plot generally refers to how the events in a piece of fiction unfold. As a result, there is always plenty to discuss in terms of plot. You can question why an author lets us know about an event before a character does, for example. Plot, too, consists of several stylistic choices you are free to critique.

Point of View

The point of view is the angle from which you read the text. Not literally, as in how your head tilts and how the light shines, but rather the literary perspective from which you approach the text. If you read a newspaper article, for example, you would have a limited omniscient point of view—you would know as many details as the narrator, that is, the reporter, would want you to know. For their part, fiction writers can and do use a variety of perspectives:readers of George R. R. Martin' s A Song of Ice and Fire series experience the story from the perspectives of its characters. Tyrion Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen are two such point-of-view characters, and Martin writes their chapters from a limited omniscient third person point of view. Other writers might write from a first-person point of view, where I is the primary pronoun; still others opt for more experimental styles and use the second person, you.

Portmanteau

Portmanteau is the joining of two words to create a new word. Often, authors create entirely new words that become part of the English language—racecar, for example, began as separate words then melded into a single word. Authors will do this on purpose to achieve a literary effect.

Prologue

Similar to epilogues, prologues are part of a story but are somewhat excluded from the primary narrative. They may include a flashback or flash forward, or focus on a different character, or be so distantly removed from the main narrative that the reader does not even understand the connection until she reads more of the story. As with epilogues, the author usually has a very good reason for writing a prologue. And, as you might guess, prologues and epilogues are usually elements of longer fiction-novels in particular.

Pun

Puns are jokes based on wordplay. Clever use of puns often hinges on how topical they are and how nimble the writer is with wordplay. Otherwise, they come off as forced and contrived rather than fun and spontaneous as the writer usually intends. Since authors usually use puns, a form of joke, to make light about subjects, you can generally expect them in humorous writings of all kinds that do not take themselves very seriously. Playing with words is common in certain kinds of poetry.

Rhyme Scheme

Rhyme scheme is how a poem rhymes—for example, does the first line rhyme with the second? Or does it rhyme with the third? Generally, we express rhyme scheme using letters:a-b-a-b, for example, if the first and third lines rhyme and the second and fourth rhyme. As you may have guessed, rhyme scheme is mostly peculiar to poetry.

Satire

Satire is writing that mocks a phenomenon or idea by taking itself so seriously that readers cannot take it seriously. Jonathan Swift' s A Modest Proposal, in which Swift proposes that poor families sell their children as food to richer families, is a famous example of satire. In the essay, Swift' s main purpose is to make the reader detest the narrator and sympathize with the plight of the poor Irish. In fact, modern studies treat A Modest Proposal' s argument as the logical extreme of the attitudes of the contemporary ruling elite. Satirical pieces are sometimes hard to classify as being fiction or nonfiction;Swift' s A Modest Proposal was based on real events, after all. Suffice it to say, however, that satire can occur in any literary medium and take many forms.

Setting

Setting generally refers to the time and place where a story occurs. If the author mentions where or when a story is set, then this will inevitably be important. Often, this can be important in terms of historical context as well. Stories set in New York during the American Revolution, for example, would need far less explanation as to why characters fear British soldiers raiding their homes than stories set in modern-day France.

Simile

Similes are an indirect method by which authors compare objects. Unlike metaphors, similes do not follow a subject-verb-object pattern, but that is where the difference ends. Similes will have a connecting word like like or as within the comparison:she looked like a goddess versus she was a goddess. Observe how the latter construction lacks the word like. This lack of a joining word defines the indirectness of similes. Like metaphor, simile is also quite common in most forms of writing.

Spoonerism

Spoonerism occurs when a speaker or writer switches the first letters of two words. In this sense, it is somewhat similar to malapropism—for example, you hissed mystery class as opposed to you missed history class. Spoonerism is also somewhat controversial as a literary device, since it always must come off as accidental if it is to be effective, yet that same necessary sense of being accidental almost makes the reader think the author did not intend to use it.

Stanza

In poetry, a stanza is what we would consider a“verse”in songs. It is a collection of related lines, usually separated from the rest of the poem with line breaks or changes in rhythm. In Alfred, Lord Tennyson' s The Charge of the Light Brigade, for example, every stanza ends with the words six hundred. Poems can consist of one or multiple stanzas, or even refrain from using them at all if the poet decides to break every line apart. For obvious reasons, stanzas are generally confined to poetry.

Stream of consciousness

Stream of consciousness refers to a generally incoherent uninterrupted flow of thoughts. Seemingly meaningless and jumbled at first, streams of consciousness in literary settings can actually play more significant roles. One relevant example is Lucky's tirade in Samuel Beckett' s Waiting for Godot; it is a nonsensical mess in which Lucky mentions everything from the nature of God to“sports of all sorts”such as tennis. On a first reading or viewing, the ramble makes very little sense, but within the context of the play, it bears much more significance. Stream of consciousness is, with good reason, not very common in nonfiction writing, but in fiction and poetry it can often achieve great literary effects.

Suspense

Suspense is the atmosphere of panic or unrest the author creates. It leaves the reader hanging on every word she reads, equal parts anticipatory and terrified of what might happen next. Suspense, then, is a mood, can encompass imagery, and is often a result of diction. Words that create an impending sense of doom or anticipation work together to create suspense, and your experience of suspense will arise inevitably from the author' s word choice. You might feel suspense while watching your favorite sports team in an important game; you might experience the literary equivalent while reading a war novel as you wonder about the fate of the main character, or an investigative journalism piece as the author recounts her horrific discovery. In that sense, suspense is common in both fiction and nonfiction, both prose and poetry; writers will often use it to make the audience feel more engaged with the work. As those examples may demonstrate, it is often quite effective!

Symbol

Symbols are like motifs in that they recur through the text. Symbols also have deeper layers of meaning beyond how the author describes them. In John Steinbeck's East of Eden, the word Timshel is a symbol; on the surface, it is merely the subject of a theological discussion, but readers will understand that Timshel refers to the capability of choice to which the novel' s characters often return.

Synecdoche

Synecdoche is a similar concept to metonymy in that a writer invokes one thing to describe or refer to something else related to that thing. However, synecdoche specifically refers to a part of something in relation to the whole or vice versa. This makes it different from metonymy:the White House is not part of the person of the President of the United States. Rather, an example of synecdoche would be using Washington, D. C. to describe the United States Government (D. C. is technically part of the government, since Congress is responsible for it and has ultimate executive power over it). Or, when a ship captain yells to his sailors, “All hands on deck”, he uses synecdoche not because he expects his sailors to cut off their hands and throw them onto the deck literally, but rather that his sailors all get onto the deck. And in an inversion where the whole represents the part, we often refer to sports teams by their city; we might say, “Munich smashed Hamburg 4-0,” when we are not actually referring to the cities of Munich or Hamburg, but rather the football (soccer)teams of Bayern Munich and Hamburger SV. You may be able to deduce that synecdoche is particularly common in news articles, but any literary medium may use it.

Synesthesia

Synesthesia, in a medical sense, refers to a condition in which a person' s sensory functions are fused together, such that the person may be able to describe with complete validity that they can“taste sharp”or“hear purple”. In literature, synesthesia functions much the same way. A writer, for example, might describe how a character“sees music”to describe how real the music is to the character. And since literary synesthesia is a form of figurative language, it can appear in any type of text to indicate the author' s intention to create a particular descriptive effect.

Syntax

Syntax literally refers to the placement of words in a sentence. In English, standard convention relies on an order of subject-verb-object, but authors and particularly poets may play with this order to achieve a certain effect. A French character in a novel, for example, may use the subject-object-verb syntax of French when he speaks English; the author may intend for this use of different syntax to demonstrate the French character' s unfamiliarity with the English language. Since most uses of unorthodox of syntax have creative purposes, playing with syntax is usually the realm of fiction writers and poets.

Theme

The theme of a literary work is the primary message the writer wants to express. This usually takes the form of a statement, as in“war is destructive”, rather than a single word or phrase, such as“love” (which would be a motif). The theme unifies all of the writer's literary efforts and is usually the touchstone to which the writer returns at every opportunity—but how she might do that varies by the writer. The theme may be explicit, as is common in older works where evil characters always got their comeuppance, or it may be implicit as in newer works that tend to leave events up to the reader' s interpretation. But it is not a stretch by any means to contend that every literary work has a theme.

Tone

The tone of a literary work is the voice with which the author speaks. As in verbal communication, written works also convey attitudes and emotions, and the tone refers to the emotions a writer attempts to convey. A poem like Lord Tennyson' s The Charge of the Light Brigade conveys a tone of admiration at the gallantry of the valiant cavalrymen charging the cannons. And, as you may be able to tell, as with many other literary devices, tone is one of the major effects of the writer' s diction.

Tragedy

Tragedy, as the western world understands it, formed part of a triad of dramatic forms in ancient Athens together with comedy and the satyr play. A reflection on human suffering tends to characterize tragedy; what we would consider“bad endings”is the norm in tragic drama.

There are a few reasons why tragedy has remained such a prominent form of drama over the years whereas the satyr play, for example, died out. Sometimes, we empathize with the characters of a tragedy and share in their pain, and we purge our negative emotions out as we witness the tragedy. The ancient Greeks called this phenomenon catharsis, which means purification or cleansing.

At other times, pleasure or satisfaction in the tragedy informs our appreciation of it. When we see a villainous protagonist come to his downfall, such as the tyrannical Macbeth of Shakespeare' s titular play, we feel some sort of sympathy for the protagonist, whom we' ve followed for five acts and who' s descended into evil, but we also sense a sort of moral balance returning to the world when an evil force collapses.

Central to classical conceptions of tragedy is the idea of the tragic hero, which is not its own entry because of how important it is to tragedy. The tragic hero is the protagonist of a tragedy, and the tragedy is often the story of how that tragic hero descends from an honorable standing into darkness and evil. The defining characteristic of the tragic hero is the hamartia, a tragic character flaw or action that provides the impetus for the tragedy. Since the tragic hero began as a literary device in ancient Greece, tragic heroes in the classical sense most often refer to men. However, in modern tragedies, tragic heroes can also be tragic heroines.

You may, then, be able to deduce that tragedy and tragic heroes are almost exclusively the realm of fiction—be that prose, poetry, or drama. It is certainly possible that an author writes a nonfiction narrative in the form of a tragedy, but if you do choose to comment on this should you see it arise, you must consider how effectively the author imposes the trope of tragedy onto real-world events.

Understatement

Understatement is a literary device you might see in your daily life. If you ask your friend how he did on a test, he might reply with“not bad”, which might give you the impression that he did well enough to pass. However, if you find out he scored 100% on that test, you would understand that your friend was using understatement. This usually creates a humorous disconnect between the reality of the situation and how an author describes it; however, authors can also use understatement in many other ways as far removed from humor as possible. For example, Things Fall Apart, a novel by Chinua Achebe, quotes a line from W. B. Yeats'poem The Second Coming as its title. However, “things fall apart”is, while accurate, not precise or dramatic enough to capture the severity of the unrest in Igbo society.

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude describes a situation where something has the appearance of being real. In other words, verisimilitude refers to how closely a text resembles reality. If a story relies on too many contrived coincidences to drive the plot, then the verisimilitude of the story disappears and the reader may no longer be interested in the story because of its divergence from reality.

Sometimes, however, this may not necessarily be a bad thing. We read about plenty of things that we know cannot be real. The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, for example, features magic and a near-immortal evil wizard, yet so many people have read and praised the series that Rowling is now one of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom thanks to sales revenues from her works. Thus, you should understand that verisimilitude is generally an aspect of believable writing, but works that rely on the extraordinary or supernatural can diverge from reality in spectacular ways yet still capture the interest of the reader. As a rule, fiction set in modern settings as well as literally all of nonfiction will adhere to stronger verisimilitude, whereas speculative fiction such as fantasy and sci-fi will mostly ask the reader to suspend their disbelief(that is, accept it for the type of text it is)at the implausibility of some events.

Verse

Verse refers to poetry in general. It can also refer to a stanza of a poem(in verse 3 of The Charge of the Light Brigade... )but generally speaking, we would use the word stanza to be more precise.

After reading through those literary devices, you will probably have to spend some time processing them and making sure you really understand them. It does take quite a bit of time to fully internalize them—you obviously won't have this list beside you as you write the SAT, after all—but it is very worthwhile. In fact, top-performing English literature students in the International Baccalaureate programme (British English spells it that way; the IB is international and so uses the British spelling)generally memorize most of them.

Learn these definitions and be able to recognize when an author uses them. For example, when you read a speech in which Al Gore discusses climate change, you can write about how he uses cold, hard facts to create a mood of impending doom, how he uses the imagery of smokestacks and factories belching out carbon to create horror and revulsion in the reader, all of which contribute to the central theme of the speech, which is to urge the audience to action to combat climate change.

Or, if we look at poems (significantly easier to analyze than prose pieces), we could mention how Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade uses rhythm to give the reader a sense of the horses galloping forward and words like into the Valley of Death and into the jaws of Hell to create not only a mood of despair and desperation but also supplement the emotion carried by the rhythm:that the courage of these brave light brigadiers would far outshine the burdens of their deaths. The natural follow-up question to that is:why would Lord Tennyson decide to do that? To set up despair only to blow it away? A confident writer could use the evidence she dug up by asking questions to formulate a response such as“Lord Tennyson dramatizes and embellishes the Charge of the Light Brigade through imagery, rhythm and mood to send a message that courage is always victorious”. As long as the final message or claim exists within the evidence—if it is the gold from your mining and the finish line at the end of your victory lap—then you can assert that it is the sole existing meaning of the poem or story or article, and compile evidence or support your claim.

One thing to be aware of is to maintain a respectable balance between your name—dropping of devices and your actual analysis. It is not sufficient in many cases to simply write“this is imagery”or“this is metaphor”. Rather, evidence is all-important. A claim without evidence is like a house built on foundations of sand; it will wash away and disappear with the slightest provocation. This may be, perhaps, why the College Board redesigned the SAT to include specific evidence-specific questions; too many students, they probably thought, were simply guessing on the“what”questions of the SAT Critical Reading section. As you can tell, being able to find arguments and then compile your evidence to demonstrate your correctness is a valuable skill, not merely for the SAT essay but also for the new SAT overall. The“command of evidence”, as the College Board calls it, is an incredibly useful skill. It augments our abilities to think and consider, and without it we become lost. By considering all the evidence at once, you may arrive at insights you previously lacked; that is the beauty of evidence.

One interesting point that the above list lacks, being that this point is not strictly a literary device, is the use of statistics, facts, and numbers in nonfiction and fiction works alike. Many times, speeches or articles will draw on outrageous numbers:for example, how the United States owes China something in the neighborhood of $1.6 trillion (by my last count; it is probably higher now). A trillion is a number we can' t even begin to comprehend, being a thousand billions, and a billion itself is a thousand millions. Outrageous statistics like this are often a journalist' s fantasy; insane numbers on marketing outlets or social media can often draw many hundreds or thousands of clicks. In terms of writing, statistics are also often used in such a shock—inducing way—think Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and how often that film brought up possible end-times scenarios—to capture the reader' s imagination. Creating such a scenario for readers makes them naturally curious, and their curiosity will them to continue searching for goods to buy (under marketing circumstances). Under purely literary circumstances, however, that air of“officialness”and trustworthiness that often follows the ultramodern, hyper-organized way in which statistics are presented today—think formal report paper or company board meeting—lends any writing a sense of credibility, as if the reader could understand that the writer has truly indeed suffered much to write what he has. In the Al Gore case, you can also see Gore uses statistics to support his argument. This is something a writer should certainly do, to prevent factual misconceptions from arising, and it is certainly something you should consider as you write your essays.

With that said, I do hope you study these literary devices thoroughly and build a strong foundation on which you can build an unrivalled skill for literary analysis. I sincerely hope this isn' t bragging on my part, but if you understand these literary devices and study the later tips for writing, then you should be entirely confident in your ability to write a brilliant essay. In a sense, it is like any other form of art:just as a pianist critiques his colleague' s fingering or dynamics—perhaps the pianist prefers contemporary or editorialized dynamics, compared with his colleague who prefers the originals—a writer critiques other writers' diction, style, and tone. That observant power is something gained, however, only through experience. I can only hope you, who are reading this book right now, will soon understand what it means to have“experience”. Let us move on, then, to our next section.