Literary Elements

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Discovering Literary Elements Devices
Character
Conflict
Theme
Setting
Plot
Point of View
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You will need to keep these in your binder ALL
YEAR!!! We will be referring back to this list
often.
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Literary Elements

• Setting
• Character
• Plot
• Conflict
• Point of View
• Theme
• Tone/Mood

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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

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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

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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

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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 .

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Plot

• Events that take place within a story (what
  happens)
• Five Plot Steps
• Introduction (exposition)
• Rising action
• Climax
• Falling Action
• Resolution (denoument)

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Plot Components
Climax the turning point, the most intense
momenteither mentally or in action
Rising Action the series of events and conflicts
in the story that lead to the climax
Falling Action all of the action which follows
the climax
Exposition the start of the story, before the
action starts
Resolution the conclusion, the tying together of
all of the threads
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Plot
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Plot
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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 vs Man
• Man vs Environment
• Man vs Society
• Man vs Himself

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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. 

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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 characters pov and
  cannot move from character to character, event to
  event, or have free access to the thoughts,
  feelings and motivations of the characters.

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Theme

• The storys 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

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Tone and Mood

• Tone the writers 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

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Review Bingo
Tone Internal Conflict
1st Pov Theme
2nd Pov
Mood Plot
External Conflict
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 your terms are numbered correctly and in
a row, you have bingo.
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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.

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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 Jasons body was
  never recovered, the hapless teens suspect he's
  returned to take his revenge
• The Twist It isnt Jason doing the killing, its
  his dear old mum!

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Foreshadowing

• Foreshadowing hint of clue about what will
  happen in the story.
• When looking for foreshadowing
• Are there phrases about the future?
• Is there a change happening in the weather, the
  setting, or the mood?
• Are there objects or scenic elements that suggest
  something happy, sad, dangerous, exciting, etc.?
  
• 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.

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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 why Johnny carries around the knife.

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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 morning of the present. Scrooge
  repents and becomes kind and generous.

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Dialogue

• Dialogue the conversation between characters

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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.

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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.

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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.

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IRONY
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IRONY
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IRONY
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IRONY
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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

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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.

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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 chokedHe's so mad, but
  he won't give up that easy, noHe won't have it,
  he knows his whole back's to these ropesIt don't 
  matter, he's dopeHe knows that, but
  he's brokeHe's so stagnant that he knowsWhen
  he goes back to his mobile home,That's when
  it's back to the lab again yo

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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
  Pinocchios. 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 wasnt
  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.

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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.

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Extended Metaphor

• The Sea by James ReevesThe sea is a hungry dog,
  Giant and grey.He rolls on the beach all
  day.With his clashing teeth and shaggy jawsHour
  upon hour he gnawsThe rumbling, tumbling stones,
  And 'Bones, bones, bones, bones! 'The giant
  sea-dog moans, Licking his greasy paws.And
  when the night wind roarsAnd the moon rocks in
  the stormy cloud, He bounds to his feet and
  snuffs and sniffs, Shaking his wet sides over
  the cliffs, And howls and hollos long and
  loud.

But on quiet days in May or June, When even the
grasses on the dunePlay no more their reedy
tune, With his head between his pawsHe lies on
the sandy shores, So quiet, so quiet, he
scarcely snores.
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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 dog-picture 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?

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Hyperbole

• A figure of speech in which the truth is
  exaggerated for emphasis or for humorous effect.

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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.

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Idioms

• See if you can determine what these idioms are
  really saying.
• He was all ears when his boss called.
• She was just a chip off the old block.
• His comments threw a wet blanket on the
  discussion.
• They were beat after a hard days work.
• After the manager quit, they were all in the same
  boat.

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Pun

• Pun a play on words that uses the similarity in
  sound between two words with distinctly different
  meanings.

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Oxymoron

• Figure of speech that combines two normally
  contradictory terms.
• Examples icy hot jumbo shrimp bittersweet

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Onomatopoeia

• The use of words whose sounds suggests their
  meaning.
• Example The boom of thunder woke me from my nap.

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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 shuffle, snore Cathy Christensen
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Personification

• The giving of human qualities to an animal,
  object, or idea.
• Example Winter trees are starving, lacking
  leaves of spring.

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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

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The End
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• I wish I could say all of this is mine... But
  its not. It is a conglomeration of all the
  different notes I have picked up over the years.