When laid out on a page, literary devices can seem like obscure, Latin gibberish. But popular writers and performers put them to use every day to enhance their work and make it memorable. Using the posts below, see if you can figure out which literary device is being used by each of these popular figures.
The Power of Repetition: https://storytellers.news.blog/2021/01/07/the-power-of-repetition/
Literary Devices: https://storytellers.news.blog/2021/03/31/literary-devices/
Adding Depth with Metaphors: https://storytellers.news.blog/2021/02/04/adding-depth-with-metaphors/
Using Symbols and Motifs: https://storytellers.news.blog/2020/11/13/using-symbols-and-motifs/
Comedian Jim Gaffigan often utilizes various literary devices in his comedy routine to anchor his jokes and emphasize his points. Looking at the literary techniques we’ve previously discussed, which is he using in each of these clips?
Mr. Universe by Jim Gaffigan
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement, from pg 122
https://storytellers.news.blog/2018/09/18/excerpt-from-prayers-for-the-stolen-by-jennifer-clement/
I had seen the house on television. I had never walked on a marble floor before, which was like walking on a piece of ice, but I had seen it. I had never sat down at a perfectly set table, with two forks, two knives, a soup spoon, and an ironed linen napkin, but I had seen it. I had never used a salt shaker or looked at star-shaped ice cubes in my glass, but I had seen it. I knew then that I could go to the Pyramids in Egypt and they’d be familiar. I was sure I could ride a horse or drive a Jeep on a safari in Africa. I knew how to cook lasagna and lasso a calf.
I remembered some of the violence and catastrophes I’d watched on television that had helped to build my television-knowledge.
When I thought of this, I tasted sour milk in my mouth like milk that sat out on the table in the jungle heat for too long. Yes, a flood could feel familiar. Yes, a car crash could feel familiar. I thought yes, a rape could feel familiar. Yes, I could be dying and even the death bed would be familiar.
Then I thought of Mike at that ranch and the blood splattered on his clothes and I knew what had happened even though I had not been inside that broken-down shack.
I’d seen my life on television.
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who say beside you in the moonlight.
Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
The church has much improved within a few years, but the press is almost without exception corrupt. I believe that in this country, the press exerts a greater and more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period.
We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper. At any meeting of politicians, like that at the Concord the other evening for instance, how impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible. How pertinent to quote from the newspaper or from the Constitution. The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every afternoon standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Bible which every man carries in his pockets which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail and thousands of missionaries are continually dispensing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed, and which America reads, so wide is its influence.
The editor is a preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is commonly one cent daily, and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of those preachers preach the truth? I repeat the testimony of many an intelligent foreigner, as well as my own convictions when I say that probably no country was ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule, only by their civility, and appealing to the worst and not the better nature of men, the people who read them are in the condition of the dog who returns to his vomit.
Life Without Principle by Henry David Thoreau
Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
A skier crossed it from the left, another crossed it from the right, and Buddy’s arms went on waving feebly as antennae from the other side of a field swarming with tiny moving animalcules like germs, or bent, bright exclamation marks.
—
I plummeted down past the zig zaggers, the students, the experts, through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise, into my own past.
One More Thing, by B.J. Novak
His life was soaked in brunette tones and accidental music, and he was, for the most part, a happy person.
—
By the way, if I never see you again, and end up teaching nothing else to you, that’s the one thing I want you to have learned from me. People, even good, impressive people, always want something simple and unimpressive. Everything good and impressive that they do in their lives is a result of the impressive path they take to get what they want, not a result of wanting an impressive thing.
KC Storytellers 