The Stories That Connect Us:

1. The Stories That Connect Us: Vocabulary and Literary Devices

2. Vocabulary These words come directly from the stories and articles in your packet and are listed in the order in which they appear. As you read, be sure to write down the sentence that you found the vocabulary word in as it will come in handy later. • Psyche - (n.) the human soul, mind, or spirit. • Atonement - (n.) reparation for a wrong or injury; making amends. • Monotony - (n.) lack of variety and interest; tedious repetition and routine • Dissension - (n.) disagreement that leads to conflict • Protuberances - (n.) a thing that protrudes from something else • Efficacy - (n.) the ability to produce a desired or intended result. • Perfunctory - (adj.) used to describe something that is done without energy or enthusiasm because of habit or because it is expected

3. Vocabulary • Eminent - (n.) successful, well-known, and respected • Judicious - (adj.) having or showing good judgement • Fettered - (v.) restrain with chains or manacles (fetters can also be used as a noun) • Ruefully - (adv.) causing, feeling, or expressing sorrow or regret • Acute - (adj.) sharp, intense • Tirade -(n.) tongue-lashing; long scolding speech • Haggard - (adj.) looking exhausted, gaunt, or excessively thin • Promontory - (n.) a point of high land that juts out into a large body of water; a headland

4. Literary Devices • Allusion: An allusion is an implied or indirect, brief reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event. This is usually used as an analogy to help explain something that may be difficult to comprehend. • Analogy: A similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be logically based. (ex: heart : pump) • Bildungsroman:A German term for a genre of literature that concentrates on the development and growth of the protagonist usually from childhood to maturity. Sometimes it is referred to as a "Coming of Age Story."

5. Literary Devices • Connotation: The feeling or ideas that a word invokes in addition to its literal meaning; the emotional associations of a word • Dichotomy: paired or polar opposites • Diction: • The writer’s choice of words and ways of arranging the words. • Euphemism: • The substitution of a mild or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one. The goal is to put something bad or embarrassing in a positive or neutral light. Many terms referring to death, sex, crime, and excremental functions are euphemisms. • Hyperbole: Oh, you know this!

6. Literary Devices • Imagery: The author’s use of sensory details to create “mental images” for the reader. Imagery helps the reader see, hear, taste, smell, and/or feel the details of the story either through direct description or through the indirect use of metaphors, allusions, and other figurative language. • Irony: The meaning implied is different from the literal meaning. Often irony is used to suggest a stark contrast between what is written/said and what is meant.

7. Literary Devices • Juxtaposition: • The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, effect, suspense, or character development. • Litotes: • A kind of understatement, where the speaker or writer uses a negative of a word ironically, to mean the opposite.

8. Literary Devices • Metaphor: A metaphor is a figure of speech that expresses an idea through comparison with another object. Metaphor is the general term for a comparison made between two elements. For example, a simile is a type of metaphor, much like sarcasm is a type of irony. Personification, analogies, similes are all types of metaphors. • Motif: A recurring/dominant element, theme, image, idea, or pattern in a work of art. • Parallelism: similarity in the structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or sentences. Also called parallel structure