Literary Devices
A brief reference to a person, event, place, or work of art.
What is Allusion?
The use of indicative phrases or words and hints to set the stage for the events to unfold.
The three major kinds of Archetypes.
What is Situation, Character, and Symbol Archetypes?
This Situational Archetype is described as the descent from a higher to a lower state of being usually as a punishment for transgression. It also involves the loss of innocence.
What is The Fall?
The correct format to structure an essay.
What is Point Proof Explain?
A character, action, setting, or object that represents something else.
What is a symbol?
Language that evokes one or all of the five senses.
What is Imagery?
An older, wiser, teacher to the initiate. Often serves as a father or mother figure. Gives the hero gifts (weapons, food, magic, information), serves as a role model or as hero’s conscience.
What is the Mentor?
This Character Archetype is described as a character banished from a social group for some real or imagined crime against his fellow man, usually destined to wander form place to place.
What is The Outcast?
The underlying message or big idea in a story.
What is the Theme?
Speakers communicate propositions that are intentionally contradictory.
What is Verbal Irony?
A recurring important image or idea.
What is a Motif?
A protagonist whose life is a series of well-marked adventures. Characterized by courage, strength, and honor. Will endure hardship, even risk his life for the good of all. Leaves the familiar to enter an unfamiliar and challenging world.
What is the Hero?
This Situational Archetype is described as what the Hero must accomplish in order to bring fertility back to the wasteland, usually a search for some talisman, which will restore peace, order, and normalcy to a troubled land.
What is The Quest?
At the beginning of an essay, you use this to clearly identify the topic(s) being explored and the specific points discussed in the paper.
What is a Thesis Statement?
An outcome that turns out to be very different from what was expected.
What is Situational Irony?
A figure of speech comparing two unlike things, often introduced with the words "like" or "as".
What is a Simile?
An animal, or more usually a human, whose death in a public ceremony expiates some taint or sin of a community. They are often more powerful in death than in life.
This Symbolic Archetype is described as a place or time of decision when a realization is made and change or penance results.
This is used to firmly close your paragraph or argument. These sentences support your thesis and mirror your topic sentence.
What is a Concluding Sentence?
The attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or nature. Often linked to weather as it mirrors the events occurring in the text.
What is Pathetic Fallacy?
A comparison between two objects or ideas.
What is a Metaphor?
Two characters engaged in a love affair fated to end tragically for one or both due to the disapproval of society, friends, family, or some tragic situation.
What is Star-Crossed Lovers?
This Character Archetype is described as testing the hero’s courage and worthiness to begin the journey.
What is The Threshold Guardian?
This is used to sum up the main point of each paragraph.
What is a Topic Sentence?