5.6 Rhetorical devices (literary language)
With the use of rhetorical language the writer invites the reader to make certain associations which carry considerable significance in the text. If the associations are consistently about natural things and refer, maybe, to the main character in the story, then the writer is making a significant comment about that character in the story. It remains for the reader to engage with the text to grasp the message.
The rhetorical devices which will be examined are: metaphor, simile, personification, symbol, metonym and onomatopoeia. By using these rhetorical devices, the writer packs more meaning into a phrase or sentence than otherwise would be so or tells the reader accurately what is being seen or felt. For example, in Martine Murray’s The Slightly true story of Cedar B. Hartley who planned to live an unusual life, there are many instances when Cedar explains to the reader through similes how she is thinking or feeling: ‘. . .and I must have trudged that grumpy feeling right out of me and right into the mud because I could feel something else rising up, all fluttery like a big gulp of lemonade,’ and ‘She seemed very shiny and compact and well designed, like a box that expensive jewellery might come in.’ The writer certainly has Cedar make unusual comparisons but they are true to her very young teenage self and her world of experience. By comparing her change of mood from gloominess to happiness with ‘a big gulp of lemonade’, Cedar pinpoints the effervescence of her mood. She is bubbling all over and feels a rising excitement. In the second simile, Cedar is observing Kite’s mum speaking to a performer in a dressing-room. She sees Kite’s mother as a person well-proportioned and self-contained.
Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech in which an inferred comparison is made between two unrelated things or nouns that are usually not brought together or in relationship with each other.
Examples:
She was a scarecrow standing there with her tattered rags and bony, protruding
limbs.
She swept the audience with her glance.
The sun was a golden coin.
Simile
Examples:
A simile expresses a comparison using ‘like’ or ‘as’.
The girl sang like an angel.
The mist hung like a veil over the valley.
He felt as bloated as a balloon.
Personification
A personification is a metaphor in which a thing/animal is given human characteristics.
Examples:
The muffled bell moaned across the countryside.
The moon was peeping over the hedge into the deserted garden.
Symbols
Symbols represent the way a writer uses specific concrete objects or simple actions or even the names of characters to stand for abstract ideas. Symbols often make connections with larger, more universal meanings. In a text they could be representing: money or power or both, guilt or innocence, failed hopes, death and many more. The ordinary actions or objects only have symbolic meaning within a text and because the writer has used them in a specific way to make a certain message obvious to the reader.
Example:
In The Secret Garden the author, Frances Hodgson Burnet, uses the garden as a symbol. At the beginning of the novel, the garden is closed, neglected and forgotten but as the story unfolds a transformation or rejuvenation occurs in which the garden is restored, inhabited and cherished by the children. The important point is that this garden transformation actually symbolises what happens to the characters in the story. Two very sad, repressed, young children are gradually and steadily transformed into two vigorous, happy and purposeful human beings who attract others to them with the true and beautiful colours of their very young and innocent selves. The garden symbolises their innate ability to grow and change given the right conditions.
Metonym
In metonym the writer substitutes something else for the name of a certain noun.
Example:
Shakespeare set his plays in the sceptred isle. Here ‘sceptred isle’ refers to England under the rule of kings.
Onomatopoeia
In onomatopoeia the pronunciation of words echoes their meaning.
Examples:
boom, hiss, chime, bang, buzz
The hall was already crowded with chattering people.
He was aware of the drone of a plane over by the side of the
mountain.