FIGURE OF SPEECH

1. Metaphor - compares two unlike things or ideas.

Examples are:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

The snow is a white blanket.

The hospital was a refrigerator.
The classroom was a zoo.
He is a shining star.
Time is money.

2. Irony - using words where the meaning is the opposite of their usual meaning.
Examples are:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

After begging for a cat and finally getting one, she found out she was allergic.
A traffic cop gets suspended for not paying his parking tickets.
The Titanic was said to be unsinkable.
Dramatic irony is knowing the killer is hiding in a closet in a scary movie.
Naming a Chihuahua Brutus.

3. Personification - giving human qualities to non-living things or ideas.

Examples are:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

Lightning danced across the sky.

The wind howled in the night.
The car complained as the key was turned.
Rita heard the last piece of pie calling her name.
My alarm clock yells at me every morning.

4. Hyperbole - uses exaggeration for emphasis or effect.

Examples are:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

Lets be best friends forever.

Nothing can stop our team from winning the championship.
My dress shoes are killing me.
He was skinny enough to jump through a keyhole.
Going to Disneyland is the best idea ever.

PARTS OF A STORY
1. Character - person, or sometimes even an animal, who takes part in the action of a short
story or other literary work.
Examples are:
a. Tell the reader directly what a character's personality is like:
"Mrs. Freeman could never be brought to admit herself wrong on any point."
Flannery O'Connor, "Good Country People"
b. Describe a character's appearance and manner:
"The Baker, who was an older man with a thick neck, listened without saying
anything when she told him the child would be eight years old next Monday. The
baker wore a white apron that looked like a smock. Straps cut under his arms,
went around in back and then to the front again, where they were secured under
his heavy waist. He wiped his hands on his apron as he listened to her. He kept his
eyes down on the photographs and let her talk."
Raymond Carver, "A Small, Good Thing"
c. Portray a character's thoughts and motivations:
"I didn't come to Utah to be the same boy I'd been before. I had my own dreams of
transformation, Western dreams, dreams of freedom and dominion and taciturn
self-sufficiency. The first thing I wanted to do was change my name. A girl named
Toby had joined my class before I left Florida, and this had caused both of us
scalding humiliation.
"I wanted to call myself Jack, after Jack London. I believed that having his name
would charge me with some of the strength and competence inherent in my idea of
him. The odds were good that I'd never have to share a classroom with a girl
named Jack. And I liked the sound. Jack. Jack Wolff."
Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life
d. Use dialogue to allow a character's words to reveal something important about his
or her nature:
"Unable to contain herself, [Mrs. Bennet] began scolding one of her daughters.
'Don't keep coughing so, Kitty, for heaven's sake! Have a little compassion on my
nerves. You tear them to pieces.'"
Jane Austin, Pride and Prejudice

e. Use a character's actions to reveal his or her personality:

"He would hang around our place on Saturdays, scornful of whatever I was doing
but unable to leave me alone. I couldn't be on the swing without him wanting to try
it, and if I wouldn't give it up he came and pushed me so that I went crooked. He
teased the dog. He got me into troubledeliberately and maliciously, it seemed to
me afterwardby daring me to do things I wouldn't have thought of on my own:
digging up the potatoes to see how big they were when they were still only the size
of marbles, and pushing over the stacked firewood to make a pile we could jump
off."
Alice Munro, "Miles City, Montana"

2. Setting - the time and place in which it happens. Authors often use descriptions of
landscape, scenery, buildings, seasons or weather to provide a strong sense of setting.
Examples are:
a.

Refer specifically to place and time:

"In the early weeks of 1837, Charles Darwin was a busy young man living in
London."
David Quammen, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin

b.

Provide clues about the place and time by using details that correspond to certain
historical eras or events:
"Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each
[man] carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or
groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed
almost 2 pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when
Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry
him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away."
Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried"
(A short story about the Vietnam War)

c.

Describe the inside of a room where a scene takes place:

"The walls were made of dark stone, dimly lit by torches. Empty benches rose
on either side of him, but ahead, in the highest benches of all, were many
shadowy figures. They had been talking in low voices, but as the heavy door
swung closed behind Harry an ominous silence fell."
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

d.

Describe the weather and the natural surroundings:

"And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect
day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without
a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes
in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and
sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants
had been seemed to shine."
Katherine Mansfield, "The Garden-Party"

e.

Weave details about setting into the descriptions of action:

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been
passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country;
and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view
of the melancholy House of Usher."
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher"

3. Plot - a series of events and character actions that relate to the central conflict.
Examples are:
a. Give the reader direct information by mentioning an upcoming event or
explaining the plans of the people or characters portrayed in the text:
"As the Lincolns rode to Ford's Theatre on 10th Street, John Wilkes Booth
and three conspirators were a block away at the Herndon House. Booth had
devised a plan that called for the simultaneous assassinations of President
Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward, and Vice President Johnson. Having learned
that morning of Lincoln's plan to attend the theatre, he had decided that this night
would provide their best opportunity."
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
b. Place clues in the first few sentences of a story or chapter to indicate the themes
that will be important later:
"I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a
strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though
neither of us knew it at the time, chess games."
Amy Tan, "Rules of the Game"

c. Portray characters' subtle reactions to objects in their environment to show that

those objects might play an important role in the upcoming action:
"[The men] stood together, away from the pile of rocks in the corner, and
their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed... Bobby Martin
ducked under his mother's grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of
stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place
between his father and his oldest brother."
Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery"
d. Use changes in the weather or mood to hint at whether good or bad fortune will
follow:
"The night was still. I could hear his breath coming easily beside me.
Occasionally there was a sudden breeze that hit my bare legs, but it was all that
remained of a promised windy night. This was the stillness before a
thunderstorm."
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

4. Theme - the central idea or belief in a short story.

Examples are:
a. Love and friendship:
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

b. War
Iliad and Odyssey by Homer
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Arms and the Man by Bernard Shaw
A Band of Brothers: Stories from Vietnam by Walter McDonald

c. Crime and mystery

The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

d. Revenge
Hamlet and Macbeth by William Shakespeare
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson
A Time to Kill by John Grisham