Figurative Language (terms)
Exaggeration that emphasizes a certain point or creates a strong impression
Hyperbole
The element of fiction that deals with events.
Plot
Alternative interpretations of a text can serve as ________ in an essay.
counterarguments
“Her and Michael sleep on the sofa, both of them fish-thin, slender as two gray sardines, packed just as tight.”
simile (Sing, Unburied, Sing)
“I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings!”
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Charlotte Perkins Stetson also OK)
Establishes a relationship between two ideas or things by equating/replacing one with the other
Metaphor
In contrast to the real world, this is the alternative world in which a piece of fiction takes place.
storyworld
Name the three rhetorical appeals.
ethos, pathos, logos
“I had the mail-order Catholic soul you get in a girl raised out in the bush, whose only thought is getting into town. Sunday Mass is the only time my father brought his children in except for school, when we were harnessed. Our souls went cheap. We were so anxious to get there we would have walked in on our hands and knees.”
Metaphor ("Saint Marie")
“So I went upstairs. My legs felt like they didn’t have any strength in them. They felt like they did after I’d done some running. In my wife’s room, I looked around. I found some ballpoints in a little basket on her table. And then I tried to think where to look for the kind of paper he was talking about.”
"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver
Attributes personal or human characteristics to a nonhuman entity, object, or idea
Personification
A narrator that has unlimited knowledge of the characters, events, etc. in the storyworld is an _________ narrator.
omniscient
Topic sentences that introduce the new information of the topic by first restating what the reader already knows use this strategy.
Old/New Contract
“I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down.”
“Each year, a tribute of children are sent beyond the Wall, never to be seen or heard from again. The enemy is very specific about their requirements. They take ten percent, plus one.”
"Valedictorian" by NK Jemisin
When a term for a part is used to refer to the whole.
synecdoche
In fiction, language is ________, meaning that it takes primary importance.
foregrounded
This fourth, lesser known rhetorical appeal is all about the timeliness of the argument. Why make this argument now?
Kairos
“Then they would emerge, they would be out of it, the line as sharp as the demarcation of a doored wall. Suddenly skeleton cotton- and corn-fields would flow away on either hand, gaunt and motionless beneath the gray rain; there would be a house, barns, fences, where the hand of man had clawed for an instant, holding, the wall of the wilderness behind them now, tremendous and still and seemingly impenetrable n the gray fading light…”
Metaphor ("The Old People")
“I feel like I’m turning into this fierce person. A taskmaster to myself, like a ballet dancer or a monk. Are monks happy? No, they are not interested in that category of feeling. But I’m supposed to be. I’m an American.”
"The Huntress" by Sofia Samatar
Connects/combines elements that appear to be contradictory, but conceals a point or paradox
oxymoron
________ characterization is when the narrator describes a character’s physical, mental, or behavioral characteristics.
Indirect
The XYZ thesis is shorthand for… (i.e. the 3 words)
Observation, Intervention, Implication
“The boy, crouched on his nail keg at the back of the crowded room, knew he smelled cheese, and more: from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves close-packed with the solid, quat, dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach read, not from the lettering which meant nothing to his mind but from the scarlet devils and the silver curve of fish…”
Personification ("Barn Burning")
“Only the bathroom was impressive; very clean, white tiled. It had a mirror with a movie star’s bald light bulbs circling it. She locked herself in here, ran both of the taps full blast, and sat on the closed toilet seat. She took a worn-looking, folded photograph from her coat pocket and wept.”
"Martha, Martha" by Zadie Smith