Literary Devices

1. Literary Devices

2. Figures of Speech • Expressions that are not LITERALLY true, but suggest similarities between usually unrelated things. • Examples: • He was tied up in traffic. • That check you wrote bounced! • I sat at the foot of the bed.

3. Simile • Comparison of two unlike things using a word of comparison such as like, as, than or resembles • Examples: • Her hands were like ice. • I fell lower than a snake in a ditch.

4. Metaphor • Comparison of two unlike things directly without using a word of comparison. • Examples: • Her heart is made of stone. • Lewis is a rotten skunk!

5. Personification • Giving a nonhuman or inanimate thing human or lifelike qualities. • Examples: • A falling leaf danced on the breeze. • The train eats up the miles. • The sun smiled on our cookout.

6. Symbols • People places or events that have a meaning in themselves but that also stand for something beyond themselves. • Example: • The whale hunted by Captain Ahab in the novel Moby Dick was a symbol of evil.

7. Dialect • A way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular place or group of people. • Examples: • Y’all com back now, ya hear! (southern) • Dat bum wanted me to take him to Noo Jorsey. (north eastern)

8. Imagery • Language that creates word pictures and appeals to the senses. • Example: • The sun that bleak December day, rose cheerless over hills of gray.

9. Irony • When reality contradicts what we expect. • Verbal- when we say just the opposite of what we mean. • Dramatic- when we know something a character doesn’t know. • Situational- when what happens is different than what we expect.

10. Allusion • A reference to something in current events, on TV, in history, in literature that most of the public shares. • Example: • ‘The big kids call me Mercury cause I’m the swiftest thing in the neighborhood.’

11. Judgement • When you form an opinion about the story.