Literary Elements

Literary Elements

• ·       Antagonist – An antagonist usually is against the protagonist of a story.  In most cases the antagonist is the bad guy and the protagonist is the good guy. Sometimes this is not the case though.
• ·       Character – Can be identified as a person or animal in a story. For example Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web and Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web both are characters only difference is one is a human and the other is an animal.

·       Conflict – A problem between two conflicting forces in a story. The four types of conflicts are: Person Against Person – A conflict between characters in a story, Person Against Self –A conflict between a character’s own thoughts, Person Against Society- A conflict between character and society, school, law, or tradition, the last type of conflict is Person Against Nature – A conflict between a character (person or animal) and some type of component of nature.

• ·       Mood And Tone – The mood of a story wants the reader to feel depending on the information given, the tone gets the reader to react in a certain way.
• ·       Plot – The plot is the main result following the sequence of events or order of the story.
• ·       Protagonist – The good guy of the story. Usually confronted by the antagonist.
• ·       Setting – The setting tells us when, where, and the mood of the story.
• ·       Themes – The theme is the main emphasis of the story that deals with life or human nature.

Literary Devices

• ·       Allegory - a story in which the characters and events are symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation
• ·       Allusion – An allusion adds meaning to story by incorporating a famous person, place, event, or work of art to enhance the story.
• ·       Archetype - the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies
• ·       Deus ex machine - a character or thing that unexpectedly enters the story and solves a problem that had previously seemed impossible to solve
• ·       Hyperbole – Hyperbole is the   language that describes something as better or worse than it really is, it helps emphasize the emotion.
• ·       Imagery – Imagery is when the author uses specific words or phrases that causes people to imagine pictures in their mind.
• ·       Metaphor – A metaphor is a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing to show or propose that they are similar
• ·       Motif – Motif is repeating a specific theme throughout the story.
• ·       Point of view – Point of view is the viewpoint from which the story is being told. We have First-person: which is the narrator, using “I” or “we”; Third-person which is the narrator outside the story using “he”, “she”, or “they”; Third-person limited which is the narrator states only what a specific character perceives; and finally Third-person omniscient which the narrator can view the thoughts of all the characters.
• ·       Simile – When the author uses the word “like” to compare two unrelated things, people, places, or concepts. 
•     Symbolism – Symbolism is using symbols to represent something more than its literal meaning.