Literally Literture
The following narrative is an example of this type of point of view:
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
What is first-person point of view
In this description of a sunset on the Mississippi River, Mark Twain is using this type of comparison:
"I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold..."
What is metaphor?
A genre in which the author writes the story of his or her own life.
What is Autobiography?
A rhetorical device that repeats an idea in simpler, easier to understand ideas:
"The burning of the our home was a calamity— a real disaster!"
What is Restatement?
In his poem, Longfellow employs this rhyme scheme:
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
What is AABB AACC?
In this description of the Mississippi River, Mark Twain is using this type of literary device:
"There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring."
What is imagery.
In this description of a sunset over the Mississippi River, Mark Twain uses this type of comparison:
"...the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun."
What is a simile.
The reasons an author writes could be to inform, to persuade, or to entertain.
What is author's Purpose?
Thoreau employs this rhetorical use of the word government in "Civil Disobedience":
"...also I believe- "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient."
What is Repetition?
Longfellow employs this type of end rhyme in his poem:
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
What is exact rhyme?
In this scene with Myrtle's husband near the end of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald is employing this type of irony:
""He murdered her."
"It was an accident, George."
Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a superior "Hm!"
"I know," he said definitely, "I'm one of these trusting fellas and I don't think any harm to nobody, but when I get to know a thing I know it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he wouldn't stop."
Michaelis had seen this too but it hadn't occurred to him that there was any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson had been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any particular car."
What is Dramatic Irony
In his famous speech, Dr. Martin Luther King describes racial inequality using this type of comparison:
"It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
What is analogy?
Mark Twain often employed this device to create his characters:
"There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49 or may be it was the spring of '50 I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp..."
What is Vernacular?
Dr. Martin Luther King's references to Bible verses in his speech is an example of this rhetorical device:
"We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
What is Allusion?
The type of rhyme in which the ends of each line rhyme.
What is End Rhyme?
In The Great Gatsby, the green light is an example of this literary device.
What is a Symbol?
This type of poetry has no set rhyme scheme or meter:
...who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,...
What is Free Verse?
This type of irony is evident throughout The Wizard of Oz; Dorothy goes all the way to the wizard in order to find a way home, only to learn that she is capable of doing so herself all along.
What is Situational Irony?
John F. Kennedy employs this repeating syntactical structure in many of his speeches:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
What is Parallelism?
Edgar Allen Poe employs this type of rhyme in his poem:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
What is Slant Rhyme?
The disintegration of the American dream in an era of historical wealth and material excess is one of these from The Great Gatsby.
What is a Theme?
This type of rhyme happens within the lines of a poem.
What is Internal Rhyme?
A brief restatement of an author's main ideas.
What is a Summary?
An author employs word choice and choice of details to convey his or her attitude.
What is Tone?
The poetic device used by Allen Ginsberg:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
What is Cataloguing?