Literary devices/elements Flashcards
Imagery
Words that appeal to the five senses: hearing, taste, touch, sight and sound. Act 1, Scene 3, Macbeth “Why do you dress me / In borrow’d robes?”
Simile
Way of comparing two unlikes things using like or as. Lady Macbeth: “The sleeping and the dead, are but as pictures.”
Soliloquies
Longer speeches that allow characters to reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings to audience. Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth: “Glamis thou art…”
Euphemism
Indirect way of expressing something; it may be more polite than reality. Act 2, Scene 2, Lady Macbeth: “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.”
Comic relief
Allows a playwright to include elements of humour in plays that are otherwise serious. These humorous interludes give the audience a break from the dramatic tension of the rest of story.
Double entendre
A statement that has two different meanings, one of which may be sexual. In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth asks the spirits to “unsex” her. This can mean both “turn her into a man” and “free her of mercy and gentleness” qualities associated with women.
Conflict
What creates tension and drama in the play
External conflict
The struggle between an individual and an outside force, such as nature or another individual. There is external conflict between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, who is pushing him harder to be more ruthless.
Internal conflict
The mental struggle within the individual. Macbeth suffers internal conflict because he badly wants to be King but knows that murdering Duncan is wrong.
Verse structure
Refers to the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the language of the play.
Implication
A hint of suggestion contained in the writing. In Act 1, Scene 3, Macbeth says his “Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” Here he implies that knowing what to fear is better than ot knowing what to fear and having to imagine it.
Allusion
A reference to a historical or literary figure, happenings or event that is meant to enhance the meaning of the story. Act 2, Scene 2, Macbeth refers to Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, when expressing frea that his murderous conscience will never be cleansed.
Symbol
A person, object, action, or place that stands for something beyond its oious meaning. In Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 1, Macbeth thinks he sees a dagger floating in the air before him. The dagger probably symbolises the “bloody business” that he must carry out if he is to become king.
Mood
The overall feeling or atmosphere an author creates with his or her selection of details. Macbeth opens on a barren heath with three Witches muttering incantations over the background sounds of thunder and lightning. The mood is dark and foreboding.
Hyperbole
An exaggeration you are not supposed to take literally. In Act 3 Scene 4, Macbeth says “I am in blood, stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”He is claiming that it is just as easy to go forward with his bloody plans as to go backwards, which is not necessarily true.
Foreshadowing
Hints about what might happen at a later point int he plot. In Act 3 Scene 2, Macbeth says to his wife, “We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it.” They have not put trouble to rest by killing Duncan.
Personification
Figure of speech in which human characteristics are given to nonhuman things. When Macduff discovers Duncan’s dead body he exclaims, “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece”. Human beings have the ability to kill and create havoc, such as the blooding scene in the royal castle, but abstractions such as confusion do not.
Dramatic irony
Occurs when the audience knows something the characters onstage do not. In Act 1 King Duncan calls Macbeth his “peerless kinsman” and bestows other praise on him, unaware that Macbeth will soon murder him.
