Discovering
Literary
Elements &
Devices
Character
Setting
Conflict
Plot
Theme
Point of
View
You will need to keep these in
your binder ALL YEAR!!! We
will be referring back to this
list often.
Literary Elements
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Setting
Character
Plot
Conflict
Point of View
Theme
Tone/Mood
Setting
• The time and location where a
story takes place (the physical
location, year, day, hour, culture)
• Setting is created through
descriptive words, sensory images,
and details
• Setting is used to create a mood
or atmosphere or be the source of
conflict or struggle
Character
• People in the story
• Protagonist – main character
• Antagonist –the person against the
protagonist
• Primary (Main)Characters – play a major
role within the story
• Secondary (Minor) Characters – play a
minor role within the story
Characters are…
• Dynamic – developing personalities that
change, for better or worse, by the end of
the story
• Static - do not experience basic character
changes during the course of the story.
• Round – complex, multidimensional, and
developed, embodying a number of qualities
and traits
• Flat - stereotypical, have one or two
characteristics that never change and are
emphasized
Characterization
• A writer reveals what a character is like
and how the character changes
throughout the story.
• Two methods of characterization:
• Direct- writer tells what the character is like
• Indirect- writer shows what a character is like
by describing what the character looks like, by
telling what the character says and does, and
by what other characters say about and do in
response to the character.
• Character motivation is what causes
the character to behave and react to
events and other characters in the story
Plot
• Events that take place within a story
(what happens)
• Five Plot Steps
• Introduction (exposition)
• Rising action
• Climax
• Falling Action
• Resolution (denoument)
Plot Components
Climax: the turning point, the most
intense moment—either mentally
or in action
Rising Action: the series of
events and conflicts in the story
that lead to the climax
Exposition: the start of the story,
before the action starts
Falling Action: all of the
action which follows the
climax
Resolution: the conclusion, the
tying together of all of the threads
Plot
Plot
Conflict
• Main struggle (problem) of the story,
drives the plot
• Two categories of conflict:
• Internal – inside the character
• External – protagonist against an
outside force
• Four types of conflict:
–
–
–
–
Man
Man
Man
Man
vs Man
vs Environment
vs Society
vs Himself
Point of View
• The angle from which the story is told.
• Narrator – the speaker, character, who recounts the
events of a novel
• First Person - The story is told by the protagonist or
one of the characters who interacts closely with the
protagonist. The reader sees the story through this
person's eyes as he/she experiences it.
• The unreliable narrator can't be trusted; either from
ignorance or self-interest, this narrator speaks with a
bias, makes mistakes, or even lies.
• Second Person - Use of you to address a reader or
listener directly. It does appear in letters, speeches,
and step-by-step instructions.
Point of View
• Third Person Omniscient- The narrator can move from
character to character, event to event, having free
access to the thoughts, feelings and motivations of the
characters and introduces information where and when
he chooses.
• Third Person Limited- The narrator tells the story
primarily from one character’s pov and cannot move from
character to character, event to event, or have free
access to the thoughts, feelings and motivations of the
characters.
Theme
• The story’s main idea or message – it is
NOT a summary of events
• There are several universal themes:
– Love conquers all
– Good vs evil
– Rags to riches
Tone and Mood
• Tone – the writer’s
attitude towards the
audience or subject
• Mood (atmosphere) – the
feeling created in the
reader by the literary
work or passage
• Remember tone refers to
the writer while mood
refers to the reader
Review Bingo
Draw a 5 by 5 cell table.
Write an literary element in
each block. Do not use the
same term twice. It is okay
if you do not use all the
terms defined. I will call
out the definition for the
terms we have studied.
Write a number in the box
of the term called out ( if
tone was 1 write a 1 in the
box for tone. When you
have five in a row, call bingo.
Then show me the card, if
Tone
Intern
Conflic
1st Pov
Theme
2nd Pov
Mood
Plot
Extern
al
Conflic
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Literary Devices and
Techniques
On the EOG, reading passages include questions
about the authors’ use of literary techniques and
figurative language —tools authors use to convey
meaning or to lend depth and richness to their
writing.
• Figurative language refers to expressions that
are not literally true. Examples: metaphor,
simile, personification, hyperbole
• These devices may be used in fiction, poetry,
and nonfiction.
Surprise Ending
• Surprise Ending- conclusion that reader
does not expect
• Friday The 13th (1980)
The Set-Up: 22 years after young Jason
Voorhees died at Camp Crystal Lake, someone is
menacing the camp councelors. Given that
Jason’s body was never recovered, the hapless
teens suspect he's returned to take his
revenge…
The Twist: It isn’t Jason doing the killing, it’s
his dear old mum!
Foreshadowing
• Foreshadowing– hint of clue about what will happen in
the story.
• When looking for foreshadowing:
1. Are there phrases about the future?
2. Is there a change happening in the weather, the
setting, or the mood?
3. Are there objects or scenic elements that suggest
something happy, sad, dangerous, exciting, etc.?
4. Do characters or the narrator observe something in
the background that might be a hint about
something to come later?
• “He had no idea of the disastrous chain of events to
follow”. In this sentence, while the protagonist is
clueless of further developments, the reader learns
that something disastrous and problematic is about to
happen to/for him.
Flashback
• Flashback – interrupts the normal sequence
of events to tell about something that
happened in the past.
• In chapter 2 of S.E. Hinton's 'The
Outsiders', the protagonist/narrator Ponyboy
shares information about his friend Johnny.
One of the things he mentions is that Johnny
always carries around with him a knife.
Ponyboy uses a flashback to tell the story
about the time Johnny was beaten up by a
rival gang. He includes feelings of the people
involved, and helps set up the background
conflict between the two gangs in the story.
This also gives readers an understanding for
Flash-forward
• Flash-forward – represents expected or imagined
events in the future interjected in the main plot
revealing the important parts of the story that are
yet to occur.
• Charles Dickens’ “Christmas Carol”. The tightfisted
and ill-tempered Scrooge is visited by the “Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come” who shows him his future.
Scrooge sees himself dead, and people finding
comfort and happiness in his death. No one mourns his
death and the people he ruined in his life stole his
wealth. He sees Mrs. Dilber, his housekeeper, selling
his property to junkmen and friends. The only one
touched by his death is a young and poor couple. His
only legacy is a cheap tombstone in a graveyard. He
weeps on his own grave and asks the third ghost of
Christmas to give him a chance to change himself. He
wakes up and finds that he is back on the Christmas
Dialogue
• Dialogue – the conversation between characters
Dialect
Dialect – the language used by the people of a specific
area, class, or district. The term dialect involves the
spelling, sounds, grammar and pronunciation used by a
particular group of people and it distinguishes them
from other people around them.
Symbol
Symbol – A person, a place, an object, or
an action that stands for something
beyond itself.
Example: A single white dove flew above
the warring country, lost in its path.
IRONY
• Irony – an implied discrepancy
between what is said and what
is meant. Three kinds of irony:
• verbal irony is when an
author says one thing and
means something else
• dramatic irony is when an
audience perceives
something that a character
in the literature does not
know.
• irony of situation is a
discrepancy between the
expected result and actual
results.
IRONY
IRONY
IRONY
IRONY
Imagery
• Imagery – Consists of words and
phrases that appeal to readers’ five
senses.
• Example: Soft snow fall upon the
waiting roofs. The fluffy flakes create
a mound of white powder…
Alliteration
• The repetition of an initial consonant sound.
As J.R.R. Tolkien observed, alliteration
"depends not on letters but on sounds."
Thus the phrase know-nothing is
alliterative, but climate change is not.
• Alliteration is used to create a melody or
mood, call attention to specific words, point
out similarities and contrasts.
Assonance
• The repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence
of nearby words.
"Lose Yourself," Eminem (lyrics bolded to
indicate the long “o” rhyme and italicized to
indicate the short “a” rhyme):
Oh, there goes Rabbit, he choked
He's so mad, but he won't give up that easy, no
He won't have it, he knows his whole back's to
these ropes
It don't matter, he's dope
He knows that, but he's broke
He's so stagnant that he knows
When he goes back to his mobile home,
Allusion
• A reference within a literary work to a historical,
literary, or biblical character, place, or event.
• Examples that allude to people or events in
literature:
•
•
•
“I was surprised his nose was not growing like Pinocchio’s.” This refers
to the story of Pinocchio, where his nose grew whenever he told a lie.
It is from The Adventures of Pinocchio, written by Carlo Collodi.
“When she lost her job, she acted like a Scrooge, and refused to buy
anything that wasn’t necessary.” Scrooge was an extremely stingy
character from Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carol.
“Chocolate was her Achilles’ heel.” This means that her weakness was
her love of chocolate. Achilles is a character in Greek mythology who
was invincible. His mother dipped him in magical water when he was a
baby, and she held him by the heel. The magic protected him all over,
except for his heel.
Simile and Metaphor
• Simile – direct comparison between two
unlike objects using like or as.
• Example: Paul Bunyan is as big as a mountain.
• Metaphor – a figure of speech in which
something is described as though it is
something else. Unlike a simile, a metaphor
does not contain like or as.
• Example: Paul Bunyan is a mountain of a man.
Extended Metaphor
The Sea by James Reeves
The sea is a hungry dog,
Giant and grey.
He rolls on the beach all day.
With his clashing teeth and
shaggy jaws
Hour upon hour he gnaws
The rumbling, tumbling stones,
And 'Bones, bones, bones, bones!
'
The giant sea-dog moans,
Licking his greasy paws.
And when the night wind roars
And the moon rocks in the stormy
cloud,
He bounds to his feet and snuffs
and sniffs,
Shaking his wet sides over the
cliffs,
But on quiet days in May or
June,
When even the grasses on the
dune
Play no more their reedy tune,
With his head between his
paws
He lies on the sandy shores,
So quiet, so quiet, he scarcely
snores.
Extended Metaphor
• The whole poem is a metaphor. What two things are being
identified?
• ‘Giant and grey.’ What two qualities of the sea is James
Reeves highlighting?
• What are some of the qualities the sea and a dog have in
common?
• Can you suggest why the poet writes ‘bones’ four times in
the one line?
• ‘Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs…’ What is the sea
doing?
• ‘And howls ands hollos long and loud.’ What aspect of the
sea is the poet describing?
• ‘With his head between his paws … .’ What does this dogpicture tell us about the sea?
• In the last two lines of the poem, the poet uses quite a
number of ‘s’ sounds. What picture of the sea do these
sounds give you?
Hyperbole
• A figure of speech in which the truth is
exaggerated for emphasis or for humorous
effect.
Idiom
• The group of words taken together have little or
nothing to do with the meanings of the words taken
one by one.
• You must go beyond the literal meanings of the words
in the idiom to understand its meaning.
– A Dime A Dozen: Anything that is common and easy to
get.
– A Leopard Can't Change His Spots: You cannot change
who you are.
Finding Your Feet: To become more comfortable in
whatever you are doing
• Cliché - An expression, such as “turn over a new leaf,”
that has been used and reused so many times that it
has lost its expressive power.
Idioms
See if you can determine what these idioms are
really saying.
1. He was all ears when his boss called.
2. She was just a chip off the old block.
3. His comments threw a wet blanket on
the discussion.
4. They were beat after a hard day’s work.
5. After the manager quit, they were all in
the same boat.
Pun
• Pun – a play on words that uses the similarity
in sound between two words with distinctly
different meanings.
Oxymoron
• Figure of speech that combines two
normally contradictory terms.
• Examples: icy hot; jumbo shrimp;
bittersweet
Onomatopoeia
• The use of words whose sounds suggests
their meaning.
• Example: The boom of thunder woke me
from my nap.
Onomatopoeia
ONOMATOTODAY
In the morning
yawn, stretch
to the bathroom
scratch, blink
in the shower
scrub, splash
to the closet
whisk, rustle
down the hall
thump, creak
in the kitchen
clank, clink
to the car
click, slam
on the road
honk,
screech
at the office
tick, ring
out to lunch
munch, slurp
return home
thug, moan
on to bed
snoreshuffle,
Cathy Christensen
Personification
• The giving of human qualities to an animal,
object, or idea.
• Example: Winter trees are starving, lacking
leaves of spring.
Repetition ( Refrain)
• A technique in which a sound, word, phrase,
or line is repeated for effect or emphasis.
• Example:
In my sleep,
I dream
In my sleep,
I believe
In my sleep,
I mourn
The End
I wish I could say all
of this is mine... But
it’s not. It is a
conglomeration of all
the different notes I
have picked up over
the years.