Literary Devices

Allegory: Where every aspect of a story is representative, usually symbolic, of something else, usually a larger abstract concept or important historical/geopolitical event.

Lord of the Flies provides a compelling allegory of human nature, illustrating the three sides of the psyche through its sharply-defined main characters.

Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds within close proximity, usually in consecutive words within the same sentence or line.

Antagonist: Counterpart to the main character and source of a story’s main conflict. The person may not be “bad” or “evil” by any conventional moral standard, but he/she opposes the protagonist in a significant way. (Although it is technically a literary element, the term is only useful for identification, as part of a discussion or analysis of character; it cannot generally be analyzed by itself.)

Anthropomorphism: Where animals or inanimate objects are portrayed in a story as people, such as by walking, talking, or being given arms, legs, facial features, human locomotion or other anthropoid form. (This technique is often incorrectly called personification.)

The King and Queen of Hearts and their playing-card courtiers comprise only one example of Carroll’s extensive use of anthropomorphism in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Blank verse: Non-rhyming poetry, usually written in iambic pentameter.

Most of Shakespeare’s dialogue is written in blank verse, though it does occasionally rhyme.

Character: The people who inhabit and take part in a story. When discussing character, as distinct from characterization, look to the essential function of the character, or of all the characters as a group, in the story as a whole.

Rather than focus on one particular character, Lord assembles a series of brief vignettes and anecdotes involving multiple characters, in order to give the reader the broadest possible spectrum of human behavior.

Golding uses his main characters to represent the different parts of the human psyche, to illustrate mankind’s internal struggle between desire, intellect, and conscience.

Characterization: The author’s means of conveying to the reader a character’s personality, life history, values, physical attributes, etc. Also refers directly to a description thereof.

Atticus is characterized as an almost impossibly virtuous man, always doing what is right and imparting impeccable moral values to his children.

Climax: The turning point in a story, at which the end result becomes inevitable, usually where something suddenly goes terribly wrong; the “dramatic high point” of a story. (Although it is technically a literary element, the term is only useful for identification, as part of a discussion or analysis of structure; it cannot generally be analyzed by itself.)

The story reaches its climax in Act III, when Mercutio and Tybalt are killed and Romeo is banished from Verona.

Conflict: A struggle between opposing forces which is the driving force of a story. The outcome of any story provides a resolution of the conflict(s); this is what keeps the reader reading. Conflicts can exist between individual characters, between groups of characters, between a character and society, etc., and can also be purely abstract (i.e., conflicting ideas).

The conflict between the Montagues and Capulets causes Romeo and Juliet to behave irrationally once they fall in love.

Jack’s priorities are in conflict with those of Ralph and Piggy, which causes him to break away from the group.

Man-versus-nature is an important conflict in The Old Man and the Sea.

Context: Conditions, including facts, social/historical background, time and place, etc., surrounding a given situation.

Madame Defarge’s actions seem almost reasonable in the context of the Revolution.

Creative license: Exaggeration or alteration of objective facts or reality, for the purpose of enhancing meaning in a fictional context.

Orwell took some creative license with the historical events of the Russian Revolution, in order to clarify the ideological conflicts.

Dialogue: Where characters speak to one another; may often be used to substitute for exposition.

Since there is so little stage direction in Shakespeare, many of the characters’ thoughts and actions are revealed through dialogue.

Dramatic irony: Where the audience or reader is aware of something important, of which the characters in the story are not aware.

Macbeth responds with disbelief when the weird sisters call him Thane of Cawdor; ironically, unbeknownst to him, he had been granted that title by king Duncan in the previous scene.

Exposition: Where an author interrupts