Level 1 Literary Devices
Specific word choice to alter text's tone and audience response.
What is diction?
The author’s attitude toward their subject.
What is tone?
Takes a position on/provides a defensible interpretation in response to the prompt.
What is a claim or a thesis?
Works of literature often depict acts of betrayal. Friends and even family may betray a protagonist; main characters may likewise be guilty of treachery or may betray their own values. Either from your own reading or from the list below, choose a work of fiction in which a betrayal occurs. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how that betrayal contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.
- betrayal occurs
- how does the betrayal contribute to an interpretation of the work as a whole
A character who doesn't have a well-developed backstory, personality, or motivations; who is two-dimensional and unsatisfying.
What is a flat character?
The interpretive level of a word based on its associated images and emotions rather than its literal meaning.
What is connotation?
The emotions that a text evokes from the reader.
What is mood?
To present an explanation with evidence about a specific text based on the prompt, the audience, and the intended line of reasoning.
What is commentary?
In many literary works, a character experiences disappointment when an object, person, event, or idea fails to satisfy that character’s hopes or expectations.
Either from your own reading or from the list below, choose a work of fiction in which a character experiences significant disappointment. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how the character’s response to that disappointment contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.
- character and disappointment
- how the response to that disappointment contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole
A character who doesn’t change over the course of a story.
What is a static character?
The speaker of a literary work.
What is narrator?
The repetition or variations of an image or idea in a work which is used to develop theme or characters
What is a motif?
The presence of tension, conflict, differences, changes, emotions, and human foibles in a specific text.
What is complexity?
2016, Form B. In The Defence of Poesy (1595), Sir Philip Sidney asserts that the purpose of imaginative literature is “to teach and delight.” He writes that “the poet” may sugarcoat a serious message:
“[H]e cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue —even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste...”
Choose a novel or play that seems intended both “to teach and delight” and then write a well-organized essay in which you show how the author pursues the dual purposes of instructing and pleasing the reader in the work as a whole.
Response needs:
- novel or play that teaches and delights
- how the author does this
A character that by contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another.
The underlying ideas that the author illustrates through characterization, motifs, language, plot, etc.
What is theme?
An implied or indirect reference to a person, event, or thing or to a part of another text.
What is allusion?
The logical sequencing of claims that present support of a thesis statement. This is accomplished by showing the relationship between and among the thesis and the claim developed in each of the body paragraphs.
What is line of reasoning?
Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer.”
Either from your own reading or from the list, choose a work of fiction which raises a central question. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the central question the work raises, the extent to which it offers any answers, and how it contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.
Response needs to include:
- Central question
- Extent of offered answers
- How all of that contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole
A lifelike or complex character typically with fully fleshed-out and multi-faceted personalities, backgrounds, desires, and motivations.
What is a round character?
An object, a person, a situation, or an action that has a literal meaning in a story but also suggests or represents other meanings.
What is a symbol?
To compare similarities between two unrelated things as a way to make a point through the comparison
What is analogy?
In the support of the thesis and development of the line of reasoning, the writer demonstrates a mature control of language and/ or the ability to connect the text and prompt to a broader context, perspective, or argument.
What is sophistication?
Morally ambiguous characters—characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good—are at the heart of many works of literature. Either from your own reading or from the list below, choose a work of fiction in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and how the moral ambiguity contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.
Response needs to include:
- Ambiguous (of doubtful or uncertain nature; difficult to comprehend, distinguish, or classify) character
- How character is viewed as morally ambiguous
- How that ambiguity contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole
A character that undergoes significant internal changes (emotional, psychological, moral) over the course of the story and experience growth keeping them interesting and relatable.
What is a dynamic character?