Literary Devices
This term describes the perspective from which a story is told.
What is Point of View?
A direct comparison using "like" or "as" or "than."
What is a simile?
The Fate Machine: In these two novels, the main character runs away from their current reality into surreal, metaphysical worlds to discover if they can actually change their destiny.
What is The Midnight Library and Kafka on the Shore?
Both Jane Eyre and Beloved feature this "haunting" architectural setting.
What is the haunted house or Gothic Mansion?
A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem.
What is a stanza?
A character who contrasts with the protagonist to highlight specific traits.
What is a Foil?
An object that represents a larger, abstract idea.
What is a symbol?
The Social Machine: Both novels' main characters are women who refuse to marry for money or status, insisting on intellectual and emotional equality in a society that treats them as property.
What is Jane Eyre & Pride and Prejudice?
Mexican Gothic, Jane Eyre, and The Picture of Dorian Gray involve a "madwoman" or "madman" in this part of the house.
What is the attic?
A poem consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter.
What is a sonnet?
This device involves a discrepancy between expectation and reality.
What is Irony?
A reference to a well-known person, event, or literary work.
What is an allusion?
The Biological Machine: Both novels include main characters who fight for autonomy over their own bodies and the right to claim their children in systems that treat them as "vessels" or "property."
What is Beloved and The Handmaid's Tale?
Dracula and Frankenstein are told through letters, a style called this.
What is an epistolary?
The "turning point" or moment of highest tension in a plot.
What is the climax?
The sequence of events that make up a story's "why."
What is Plot?
Attributing human characteristics to non-human things.
What is personification?
The State Machine: Both novels have cog-in-the-wheel characters working for oppressive regimes who undergo a private, dangerous intellectual awakening.
What is All the Light We Cannot See and 1984?
These two novels feature human characters who are disconnected from reality and commit murder.
What is Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead & The Picture of Dorian Gray?
The author places opposing images, settings, or characters together to create tension.
What is juxtaposition (or contrast)?
A narrator whose credibility is compromised.
What is an unreliable narrator?
A comparison that does not use "like" or "as."
What is a metaphor?
The Fate Machine: Both characters in these novels run away from their current reality into surreal, metaphysical worlds to discover if they can actually change their destiny.
What are The Midnight Library and Kafka on the Shore?
These two novels use child abuse as a method to control independent youths who stand up for their moral convictions.
What is The Nickel Boys & Jane Eyre?
This structural technique begins a story in the middle of the action.
What is In Media Res?