Figurative Language and Imagery

Analogy A literary analogy is a

comparison in which the subject is compared point by point to something far different, usually with the idea of clarifying the subject by comparing it to something familiar. Analogies can provide insights and also imply that the similarities already present between the two subjects can mean even more similarities.

“a fish out of water”

Sensory Description

“I just kept quiet and looked around. And I noticed things. The dots on the ceiling. Or how the blanket they gave me was rough. Or how the doctor’s face looked rubbery.”

Appealing to the five senses… smell, sight, touch, hearing, and taste… to evoke an image.

Poetic Devices

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Metaphors vs. Similes

The purpose of the metaphor is to use the qualities of the one element to illustrate the qualities in the other.

Comparing two unlike things (usually nouns) by using or implying like or as.

“I was drowning in a sea of grief.”

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get."

Hyperbole

Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

“I had to walk 15 miles to school in the snow, uphill.”

Onomatopoeia

The use of sounds/spellings that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic effect.

Oxymoron

Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Jumbo Shrimp

Metonymy

Using a vaguely suggestive, physical object to embody a more general idea. The term metonym also applies to the object itself used to suggest that more general idea.

Synecdoche A rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part.

“All eyes were on Caroline.”

Alliteration

Repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound.

Sally sells seashells by the seashore every Sunday.

Assonance

Repeating identical or similar vowels (especially in stressed syllables) in nearby words.

"I must confess that in my quest I felt depressed and restless." - "With Love" by Thin Lizzy

Consonance

A special type of alliteration in which the repeated pattern of consonants is marked by changes in the intervening vowels.

"At midnight, in the month of June,I stand beneath the mystic moon.An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,Exhales from out her golden rim,And, softly dripping, drop by drop,Upon the quiet mountain top,Steals drowsily and musicallyInto the universal valley."Edgar Allen Poe, The Sleeper