Helpful Literary Elements

• Protagonist - Major character at the center of the story.
• Antagonist - A character or force that opposes the protagonist.
• Minor character - 0ften provides support and illuminates the protagonist.
• Static character - A character who remains the same.
• Dynamic character - A character who changes in some important way.
• Characterization - The means by which writers reveal character.
• Explicit Judgment - Narrator gives facts and interpretive comment.
• Implied Judgment - Narrator gives description; reader make the judgment.

• Foreshadowing - A suggestion of what is going to happen.
• Suspense - A sense of worry established by the author.
• Conflict - Struggle between opposing forces.
• Exposition - Background information regarding the setting, characters, plot.
• Complication or Rising Action - Intensification of conflict.
• Crisis - Turning point; moment of great tension that fixes the action.
• Resolution/Denouement - The way the story turns out.

Structure - The design or form of the completed action. Often provides clues to character and action. Can even philosophically mirror the author's intentions, especially if it is unusual.

Look for: Repeated elements in action, gesture, dialogue, description, as well as shifts in direction, focus, time, place, etc.

Setting - The place or location of the action, the setting provides the historical and cultural context for characters. It often can symbolize the emotional state of characters.

Point of View - Again, the point of view can sometimes indirectly establish the author's intentions. Point of view pertains to who tells the story and how it is told.

• Narrator - The person telling the story.
• First-person - Narrator participates in action but sometimes has limited knowledge/vision.
• Objective - Narrator is unnamed/unidentified (a detached observer). Does not assume character's perspective and is not a character in the story. The narrator reports on events and lets the reader supply the meaning.
• Omniscient - All-knowing narrator (multiple perspectives). The narrator takes us into the character and can evaluate a character for the reader (editorial omniscience). When a narrator allows the reader to make his or her own judgments from the action of the characters themselves, it is called neutral omniscience.
• Limited omniscient - All-knowing narrator about one or two characters, but not all.

Language and Style - Style is the verbal identity of a writer, oftentimes based on the author's use of diction (word choice) and syntax (the order of words in a sentence). A writer's use of language reveals his or her tone, or the attitude toward the subject matter.

Irony - A contrast or discrepancy between one thing and another.

• Verbal irony - We understand the opposite of what the speaker says.
• Irony of Circumstance or Situational Irony - When one event is expected to occur but the opposite happens. A discrepancy between what seems to be and what is.
• Dramatic Irony - Discrepancy between what characters know and what readers know.
• Ironic Vision - An overall tone of irony that pervades a work, suggesting how the writer views the characters.

Poetry

Allegory - A form of narrative in which people, places, and events seem to have hidden meanings. Often a retelling of an older story.

Connotation - The implied meaning of a word.

Denotation - The dictionary definition of a word.

Diction - Word choice and usage (for example, formal vs. informal), as determined by considerations of audience and purpose.

Figurative Language - The use of words to suggest meanings beyond the literal. There are a number of figures of speech. Some of the more common ones are:

• Metaphor - Making a comparison between unlike things without the use of a verbal clue (such as "like" or "as").
• Simile - Making a comparison between unlike things, using "like" or "as".
• Hyperbole - Exaggeration
• Personification - Endowing inanimate objects with human characteristics

Imagery - A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea which appeals to one or more of our senses. Look for a pattern of imagery.

• Tactile imagery - sense of touch.
• Aural imagery - sense of hearing.
• Olfactory imagery - sense of smell.
• Visual imagery - sense of sight.
• Gustatory imagery - sense of taste.

Rhythm and Meter - Rhythm is the pulse or beat in a line of poetry, the regular recurrence of an accent or stress. Meter is the measure or patterned count of a poetry line (a count of the stresses we feel in a poem's rhythm). The unit of poetic meter in English is called a "foot," a unit of measure consisting of stressed and unstressed syllables. Ask yourself how the rhythm and meter affects the tone and meaning.

Sound - Do the words rhyme? Is there alliteration (repetition of consonants) or assonance (repetition of vowels)? How does this affect the tone?

Structure - The pattern of organization of a poem. For example, a sonnet is a 14-line poem usually written in iambic pentameter. Because the sonnet is strictly constrained, it is considered a closed or fixed form. An open or free form is a poem in which the author uses a looser form, or perhaps one of his or her own invention. It is not necessarily formless.

Symbolism - When objects or actions mean more than themselves.

Syntax - Sentence structure and word order.

Voice: Speaker and Tone - The voice that conveys the poem's tone; its implied attitude toward its subject.