Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Figurative Devices

Satisfactory Essays
505 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Figurative Devices
Poetic Devices and Forms
Line - equates a spatial measure or words or sounds, a fundamental conceptual unit.
Stanza - a grouping of two or more lines of a poem in terms of length, metrical form, or rhyme scheme.
Figurative language - Expressions or statements that are intentionally not literally true.
Metaphor - A comparison between two objects with the intent of giving deeper meaning to the second. Forms of the "to be" verb are often used; "is" or "was". All the world’s a stage And men and women merely players
Personification - Endowing inanimate objects (an idea, object, or animal) with human traits or abilities. The wind stood up and gave a shout.
He whistled on his fingers and
Kicked the withered leaves about Simile - A comparison of two things, using the word like or as.
Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
Imagery - Sensory words or phrases that appeal to the senses or any combination of senses. It is written so that the reader can literally hear, feel, taste, touch, smell, see what the author is describing.
Point-of-view - The vantage point of the speaker, or "teller", of the story or poem.
1st person: the speaker is a character and speaks from his/her perspective (uses "I").
3rd person limited: the speaker is not part of the story yet speaks about the characters but is limited to what one character sees and feels.
3rd person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to "know" and describe what all characters are thinking.
Symbolism - When a concrete object is used to stand for a larger idea. Whitman, Emerson and Henry David Thoreau use natural objects to discuss life and infer meaning in much of their work. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.
Alliteration - The repetition of initial consonant sounds. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free.
Assonance - The repetition of vowel sounds. knee deep in the salt marsh left my necktie Rain has fallen all the day
Onomatopoeia - The use of words which imitate sound or suggest meaning. hiss, buzz, zip, bang, sizzle, slap
Repetition - The use of any element of language more than once (i.e. the repeating of words, phrases, lines, or stanzas). The skies they were ashen and sober: The leaves they were crisp and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere
Rhyme - The repetition of the terminal sound of words (ending vowel-consonant combinations are identical or have a similar sound). fan, ran; tap, slap, map; hold, mold, told
Rhyme scheme - The pattern in which rhyme occurs in a stanza. The first end sound represented as "a", the second "b", etc. (i.e. ababbcc, aabbaacc, ababbcbcc)
Rhythm - The passage of regular time intervals between events or specific sounds. In English poetry it is often the established by the number of syllables in a line or stanza.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    The Use of Metaphors

    • 3201 Words
    • 13 Pages

    A metaphor is where you show how two unrelated things are similar. For example by saying "Love is a roller-coaster.” A key aspect of a metaphor is use a specific transference of a word into another context. The human mind creates comparisons between different things. The best writers use metaphors. Like poetry, a metaphor will express a thousand different meanings all at once, allowing the writer to convey much more content than they could do otherwise. More than playing simple word games, the use of metaphors in your writing can elevate your stories to a place next to the greatest authors in the world.…

    • 3201 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Omniscient narration - A rare form of first person is the first person omniscient, in which the narrator is a character in the story, but also knows the thoughts and feelings of all the other characters. It can seem like third person omniscient at times.…

    • 962 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Omniscient point of view: Can read the minds of all characters, can be everywhere, see everything, penetrate innermost secrets of all the characters.…

    • 282 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Owl at Bridge

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Limited Omniscient-a narrator whose knowledge is limited to one character, either major or minor, has a limited omniscient point of view.…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Third person limited point of view is a method of storytelling in which the narrator knows only the thoughts and feelings of a single character, while other characters are presented only externally. Third person limited grants a writer more freedom than first person, but less than third person…

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although the two points of view include the narrator's perspective, third-person limited also attains the ability to observe the conscious thoughts of the characters. Knowing the emotions of a character works as an advantage and can give the third-person limited premonition of what will happen later in the story. Be able to see what is inside the character’s mind, they can see if they are flippant, overzealous, doggedly, or aloof. Third-person objective is limited to just what he or she hears and sees, and cannot tell how one is feeling in their mind. As an example, “The Book Thief” would be considered third-person limited because the narrator, death, is not in the story, but provides the reader with the emotions of the characters. Overall, the two elements contain…

    • 416 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    John Wilson

    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Metaphor: a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar.…

    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Narrative Voice

    • 1401 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Unless a story is written from someone's point of view there is no story. Within literature, two commonly used viewpoints are First person and Third person limited. First person is where the narrator is a character in the story; and Third person limited is told from a character's perspective. A writer will choose the point of view that they believe will best convey their message. At the heart of that choice is their choice of narrator or narrative voice. So when we talk of narrative voice, what we really mean is the view point of the person telling the story. The narrative voice that emerges from a text, engages the reader by giving them information. The information allows us to construct meaning as we read. The voice controls the information we receive at each and every stage of the story. The information we get may create a better understanding of a particular character or characters, which may enable us amongst other things to like or dislike them.…

    • 1401 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    poetry device

    • 470 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Metaphor - A comparison between two objects with the intent of giving clearer meaning to one of them. Often forms of the "to be" verb are used, such as "is" or "was", to make the comparison.…

    • 470 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Point of View

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages

    When writing a new story, the author must decide who will be narrating the story. Basically, there are two kinds of points of view: the first-person point of view, and the third-person point of view. In the first-person point of view a fictitious observer tells us what he or she saw, heard, concluded, and thought and is usually characterized by the use of the pronoun “I”. The speaker or narrator may sometimes seem to be the author speaking directly using an authorial voice. For example, Nick Carraway in “The Great Gatsby” tells the story in a first-person point of view, sharing with the reader only his thoughts and what he sees is happening. Nick Carraway says, “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy." (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 110). The second kind, the third-person point of view, breaks into three subdivisions: limited, omnisicent, and dramatic or objective. In third-person narrative, it is obvious that the narrator is merely an unspecified entity or uninvolved person that conveys the story and is not a character of any kind within the story being told. A limited third person, focuses being on one particular character and what he or she does, says, hears, thinks, and experiences, this is almost always the main character; an omniscient point of view knows the thoughts of all the characters. The third-person omniscient narrator is the least capable of being unreliable, although the omniscient narrator can have its own personality, offering judgments and opinions on the behavior of the characters. Finally, in the dramatic point of view, the story is confined only to the reporting of actions and speeches,the narrator is neutral and ineffective toward the progression of the plot, merely an uninvolved onlooker, a typical example of this point of view is “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, "All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like…

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Metaphor- When you use a metaphor, you make a statement that doesn’t make sense literally, like “time is a thief.” It only makes sense when the similarities between the two things become apparent or someone understands the connection.…

    • 1584 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Hard Times

    • 13654 Words
    • 55 Pages

    point of view: The narrator speaks in the third person and has a limited omniscience. He knows what is going on in all places and at all times, but he sometimes speculates about what the characters might be feeling and thinking, suggesting, at those times, that he does not actually know.…

    • 13654 Words
    • 55 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Footnote to Youth

    • 388 Words
    • 2 Pages

    first-person: one of the characters is telling the story. (uses I . . . )…

    • 388 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    figurative language

    • 370 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Alliteration is the repetition of a single letter in the alphabet (as in "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickle peppers.") or a combination of letters (as in "She sells seashells by the seashore."). It's just about the easiest form of repetition a poet can use.…

    • 370 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My Teacher, My Hero

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages

    an implied comparison in which one thing is spoken of in terms of something else; the figurative term is substituted for or identified with the literal term. Metaphors are extremely valuable in making an abstract idea clearer by associating the idea with something concrete that relates to one or more of the senses. “And merry larks are ploughman’s clocks.” (Shakespeare) “Entangled in the cobweb of the schools.” (Cowper) Other examples: she is a jewel; the sun is a wizard, and the moon is a witch; the sun was a golden dollar; the Lord is my shepherd; the web of our life is mingled yarn, good and ill together.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays