English 30-1 · Literary devices
Devices, and what they do
Naming a device earns nothing on its own. What earns marks is saying what it makes the reader understand or feel, and why the writer would want that. Here is the vocabulary, sorted by the job each one does.
- 1. Devices of comparison
- 2. Devices of sound and repetition
- 3. Devices of structure and irony
- 4. Writing about effect
Devices of comparison
The idea: these all say one thing is somehow another thing. What matters is what the comparison brings with it.
| Device | Is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Simile | A comparison using like or as | her voice was like gravel |
| Metaphor | A comparison stated directly | the city swallowed him whole |
| Extended metaphor | One metaphor developed across a passage | a whole poem treating grief as weather |
| Personification | Human qualities given to something not human | the wind clawed at the shutters |
| Symbol | Something concrete standing for something abstract | a locked door standing for a refusal |
| Motif | An image or idea that recurs and gathers meaning | water returning through a novel |
| Allusion | A reference to another text, person or event | calling a weakness an Achilles heel |
| Imagery | Language that appeals to the senses | the wet-wool smell of the hallway |
| Hyperbole | Deliberate exaggeration | I have told you a million times |
The city swallowed him whole is a metaphor, but the useful sentence is the next one: the city becomes something with an appetite, and he becomes something small enough to be eaten. The comparison does the work of a paragraph of description.
Devices of sound and repetition
The idea: sound devices slow a reader down, speed them up, or make a phrase stick. That is their effect, and it is what you write about.
| Device | Is |
|---|---|
| Alliteration | Repeated initial consonant sounds: wild winds whipped |
| Assonance | Repeated vowel sounds inside words: the low moan of the road |
| Consonance | Repeated consonant sounds, not only at the start |
| Onomatopoeia | A word that sounds like its meaning: hiss, clatter |
| Repetition | A word or phrase deliberately returned to |
| Parallelism | Repeated grammatical structure across phrases or clauses |
| Rhythm | The pattern of stresses; also created by sentence and line length |
Harsh consonants — k, t, g — tend to clip a line short; long vowels and soft consonants stretch it. A writer describing exhaustion will not usually choose words that snap.
Devices of structure and irony
The idea: these work across a text rather than inside a phrase, which is why they usually carry the theme.
| Device | Is |
|---|---|
| Foreshadowing | A hint of what is coming, so the later event feels earned |
| Flashback | An interruption that returns to an earlier moment |
| Juxtaposition | Two things placed side by side so the contrast makes a point |
| Verbal irony | Saying the opposite of what is meant |
| Situational irony | An outcome that is the opposite of what was expected |
| Dramatic irony | The reader knowing something a character does not |
| Oxymoron | Two contradictory words together: a deafening silence |
| Paradox | A statement that seems self-contradictory but holds a truth |
| Foil | A character whose contrast illuminates another |
Irony questions go wrong when the three kinds get mixed up. Ask who is out of step: the words and their meaning (verbal), the expectation and the outcome (situational), or the character and the reader (dramatic).
Writing about effect
The idea: device plus quotation plus effect. Two out of three is a description; all three is analysis.
The sentence pattern that always works
The writer's use of [device] in [short quotation] [verb: suggests / conveys / reveals / undercuts] that [what it means here], which [why it matters to the text as a whole].
The personification in the wind clawed at the shutters makes the storm feel deliberate rather than accidental, which turns the setting into something the family is up against rather than something they are merely in.
| Weak | Stronger |
|---|---|
| The author uses a metaphor here. | The metaphor makes the city predatory, so his arrival reads as a danger rather than an opportunity. |
| This is an example of imagery. | The smell in the hallway roots the memory in the body, which is why the narrator cannot reason her way out of it. |
| The repetition adds emphasis. | Returning to the same phrase three times enacts the obsession the speaker claims to have left behind. |
Watch out: adds emphasis, makes it interesting and helps the reader picture it are true of almost every device and therefore say nothing. Name what is emphasized, and why here.