Analytical Reading

Analytical Reading Figurative & Rhetorical Language Continued

Cliché • A cliché is a trite overused expression which is lifeless. A very large number of idioms have become clichés through excessive use. Hackneyed literary phrases (often misquoted) are another form of cliché. Because readers are often so familiar with clichés from every day speech, authors will at time employ the technique in an effort to connect with their audience. Writers may also use it on purpose to exaggerate an idea.

For example: • “Love makes the world go round. Love is blind. All you need is love. Nobody ever died of a broken heart. You’ll get over it. It’ll be different when we’re married. Think of the children. • In the passage the author employs a number of clichés when discussing the subject of love. All of these expressions have been so overused that they have become part of everyday speech and have lost most of their meaning.

Another Cliché • “Old Marley was dead as a doornail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.” (A Christmas Carol) • The author not only employs the cliché, “Dead as a doornail” but also makes reference to the fact that the expression does not even accurately describe what it is meant to anymore because of its overuse.

Your Turn: • Think of three clichés commonly found in everyday speech

Onomatopoeia • Onomatopoeia derives from the Greek word for ‘name-making.’ It is the formation and use of words that imitate sounds. For example: dong, crackle, moo, pop, whiz, whoosh, zoom. It is a figure of speech in which the sounds reflect the sense. It is very common in verse and fairly common in prose. As a rule, it is deliberately used to achieve a special effect.

For example: • “I pulled my head away from Wong Suk and looked back at her. Something like an ancient sword swooped – Whack – striking her against the wall, though outwardly nothing happened to Grandmother, or to Wong Suk, or to me.” (The Jade Peony) • In this passage the author uses the technique of onomatopoeia to describe the sound that a sword would have made if it actually struck someone against the wall. Having the sound interjected amongst the text also adds to the stylistic effect and makes the description more tangible.

Onomatopoeia continued • “One of those fatal nights, Eddie was bent over the small arcade rifle, firing with deep concentration. Pang! Pang! He tried imagining actually shooting the enemy. Pang! Would they make noise when he shot them – pang! – or would they just go down like the lions and the giraffes? Pang! Pang! (The Five People You Meet in Heaven) • The use of onomatopoeia in this passage signifies the sound that an arcade gun makes as it goes off. The author describes the sound as interrupting the characters thoughts, just as the sound typically would in real life.

Your Turn • Using onomatopoeia, write a short passage that includes the following actions: • Glass breaking • A Gust of Wind

Allusion • An allusion is a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature. Allusions are often indirect or brief references to well-known characters or events. Allusions are often used to summarize broad, complex ideas or emotions in one quick, powerful image. Thus, allusions serve an important function in writing in that they allow the reader to understand a difficult concept by relating to an already familiar story.

Allusion Example • “King Kong. The huge gorilla is at the top of the Empire State Building holding Fay Wray in the palm of his hand. A bevy of aircraft has been sent to wound the monster but he brushes them away as you would a fly. In the grip of desire a two-seater bi-plane with MARRIED on the side will barely scratch the beast. (Written on the Body) • The author is using the image of King Kong, and an allusion to the movie, to represent the idea of “larger than life.” This is an effective allusion because even those who have not seen the entire film King Kong, can usually related to the one scene where he is holding the main actress above New York City.

Allusion Continued • “If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot – say Saint Paul’s churchyard for instance – literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.” (A Christmas Carol) • The author refers to the play Hamlet in an effort to connect the audience with a well-known literary work. In addition, “Hamlet’s Father” is supposed to trigger the audiences mind the symbol of a ghost and haunting.

Your Turn • Brainstorm with your teacher some well known characters found in literature or movies that would easily represent a larger idea. • For example: Peter Pan = Never wanting to grow up.

Juxtaposition • Juxtaposition is the arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments. Juxtaposition is often used for the purpose of comparison , contrast, rhetorical effct, suspense, or character development. In literature, when a juxtaposition occurs it forces the reader to stop and reconsider the meaning of the text through the contrasting images, ideas or motifs.

Juxtaposition Example • “While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and the dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards – they were very free with all these expressions.” (All Quiet on the Western Front) • This passage juxtaposes the images of students learning in school and the tragedies that the young men in the same age groups faced on the battlefield in World War I. Situating these images sided by side, emphasizes to the reader just how stark the differences were between these two images.

Juxtaposition continued • “Beneath the dark canopy of the leaves and smoke the fire laid hold on the forest and began to gnaw. The flames as though they were a kind of wildlife, crept as a jaguar creeps on its belly towards a line of birch-like saplings that fledged and outcrop of pink rock…The heart of the flame leapt nimbly across the gap between trees and then went swinging flaring along the whole row of them. (Lord of the Flies) • One way he uses light and dark is that the jungle is dark. This underlies a sense of danger and the idea that in the jungle lurks evil. Fire is a symbol of light and more importantly, the fire must be made, watched over and never allowed to go out. The boys want the fire to be seen so that they may be rescued. Additionally it adds warmth and light in the darkness. Fire could be read as a symbol of civilization and the fear that they might lose the fire could symbolize the fear of the wild.

Your Turn • Juxtapose the following ideas in two short passages. • Hot/Cold

Rhetorical Devices • These are specific ways to structure a sentence or series of sentences to create stylistic impact. • Repetition: is an essential unifying element in nearly all poetry and much prose. It may consist of sounds, particularly syllables and words, phrases, stanzas, metrical patterns, ideas, allusions and shapes. Thus refrain, assonance, rhyme, internal rhyme, alliteration and onomatopoeia are frequent in repetition.

Repetition Example • “In an instant the whole war came surging out of him like bile. He was sickened by the captivity and sickened by the murders, sickened by the blood and goo drying on his temples, sickened by the bombing and the burning futility of it all.” (The Five People You Meet in Heaven) • In this passage, the character displays strong emotions when he thinks about the horrors of war. By exaggerating the repetition of the word, “sickened” it provides the clear effect that his memories were almost acting as a physical illness.

Repetition continued • “Morning and Evening/ Maids here goblins cry:/ Come buy our orchard fruit” / Come buy, come buy: / Apples and quinces,/ Lemons and oranges,/ Plump unpecked cherries,/ Melons and raspberries,/ Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries,/ Apricots, strawberries; -” (Goblin Market) • The repetition of the words “come buy” is supposed to be a tempting offer that is repeated like those at a market. Also, the list give of delicious fruit with an emphasis on the “berries” as something that is easily recited and remains in your mind.

Your Turn • Use the techniques of repetition to convey the following emotion in a short passage. • Feeling Lonely:

Parallelism • Parallelism is a very common device in poetry and not uncommon in the more incantatory types of prose. It consists of phrases or sentences of similar construction and meaning placed side by side.

Parallelism Example • “Nobody under the table; nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude. (A Christmas Carol)

Irony • Irony is a literary term referring to how a person, situation, statement, or circumstance is not as it would actually seem. May times it is the exact opposite of what it appears to be. There are may types of irony, the two most common being verbal irony and dramatic irony. Verbal irony occurs when either the speaker means something totally different than what he is saying or the audience realizes, because of their knowledge of the particular situation to which the speaker is referring, that the opposite of what a character is saying is true. Verbal irony also occurs when a character says something is jest that, in actuality, is true.

Irony continued • Dramatic irony occurs when the facts are not known to the characters in a work of literature but are known by the audience. Situational irony may refer to an unusual coincidence or unexpected happening that results in a surprise for those present or involved. While both verbal and dramatic irony are intentional, situational irony is not.

Verbal Irony Example • “…The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men Come I speak in Caesar’s funeral. • In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, when Mark Anthony refers in his funeral oration to Brutus and his fellow assassins as “honorable men” he is really saying that they are totally dishonorable and not to be trusted.

Dramatic Irony Example • The most sustained example of dramatic irony is undoubtedly Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus searches to find the murderer of the former king of Thebes, only to discover that it is himself, a fact the audience has known all along.

Situation Irony Example • “Seated in a stenographer’s chair, tapping away at a typewriter that had served him through four years of college, he wrote a series of guidebooks for people forced to travel on business. The writer hated travel.” (The Accidental Tourist)

Analytical Reading