Literary Devices
The overall message of a story. What the author is trying to teach you or say.
What is theme?
The appeal to logic.
What is logos?
To make a comparison using like or as.
What is a simile?
He is famous lawyer who works for the Equal Justice Initiative, and he is originally from Delaware.
Who is Bryan Stevenson?
The practice of legal execution through government orders as a result of a crime.
What is capital punishment?
A repeated pattern—an image, sound, word, or symbol that comes back again and again within a particular story.
What is motif?
The appeal to ethics or credibility.
What is ethos?
To make an extreme exaggeration.
What is a hyperbole?
A man who was wrongfully convicted in Monroeville, Alabama for the murder of Rhonda Morrison.
Who is Walter McMillian?
To gather information from evidence and your own reasoning rather than explicit statements.
What is to infer?
The creation or construction of a fictional character. This can be directly or indirectly.
The appeal to emotion.
What is pathos?
A phrase that has a figurative meaning not related to the original definition of the words. Ex: That test was a piece of cake.
What is an idiom?
The amount of time Walter McMillian spent on death row.
What is six years?
Pronounced guilty and given a specific punishment. (Hint: Walter was referred to as this several times throughout the story)
What is condemned?
The main events of a story presented by the author in a specific order.
What is plot?
A Verizon commercial that talks about how if you switch phone providers you get a brand new Iphone 14.
What is logos? Getting a new phone is a logical reason to switch to Verizon.
A comparison between two things that aren't typically compared (without like or as).
Ex: My love for English is a virus that knows no boundaries.
What is a metaphor?
A problem that Bryan Stevenson identifies in our Justice System.
What is...
Profiling, police brutality, capital punishment, youth imprisonment, etc.
The perspective from which a story is told.
What is point of view?
When a storyteller hints at future events. Often occurs at the beginning of a story.
What is foreshadowing?
The SPCA advertising sad puppies in kennels to promote people adopting dogs.
What is pathos?
The art or practice of persuasive speaking and writing.
What is rhetoric?
One way the movie is different than the book.
What is...
Compassion shown towards an offender.
What is mercy?