Literary Terms and Definitions

Unit 1: “The Scarlet Ibis”By James Hurst

Plot

• A series of related events that make up a story.– Plot Chart:

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Exposition

• The first stage of a plot. The setting and characters are introduced.

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Rising action

• The second stage of a plot. The suspense is created by increasing conflict.

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Climax• The third stage of the plot. The highest point

of interest or most suspenseful moment in a story.

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Falling action

• The fourth stage of the plot. Short section following the climax of a story in which suspense falls.

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Dénouement

• The stage of the plot when all the “loose ends are tied up.”

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Resolution

• The stage of the plot when all the problems in the story are resolved.

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Alliteration

• Repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants or consonant cluster, in the initial letters of a group of words.– Lovely Lady Gaga grew gaggles of gorgeous

greens.

Allusion

• A reference, in a piece of literature, to a well known person, place, or thing.– Yesterday, we heard a choir perform the Spiritual

“Wade in the Water.”

External conflict

• A struggle between a character and something outside of himself or herself.– Man vs. Man– Man vs. Nature– Man vs. The supernatural– Man vs. Technology– Man vs. Society

Internal conflict

• A struggle between a character and himself or herself. – Man vs. Himself

First person point-of-view

• One of the characters in the story is actually telling the story using the pronoun “I.” The reader knows the thoughts and feelings of ONE character.

Third person limited point-of-view

• The narrator is not in the story, but rather “on the outside looking in.” The narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of only ONE of the characters.

Third person omniscient point-of-view

• The narrator is not in the story, but rather “on the outside looking in.” The narrator knows the thoughts, feelings, and actions of all the characters within the story.

Imagery

• Language that appeals to one or more of the five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing.

• The flower garden was stained with rotting brown magnolia petals. Ironweeds grew rank amid the purple phlox. I crushed the dried petals as I walked along, the crackling echoing like a shot in a canyon.

Metaphor

• A comparison between two unlike things that does not use the words “like” or “as.”– “I did not know then that pride is a wonderful,

terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death” (Hurst). • Compares “pride” to two vines without using “like” or

“as.”

Mood

• The emotions a piece of literature create in the reader.– How does the story make the reader feel?

Personification

• Giving human qualities to nonhuman things.– “Summer was dead but autumn had not yet been

born.” (Hurst)• Can summer literally lose its life and die?• Can autumn literally be born?

Simile

• A comparison between two things using the words “like” or “as.”– “The oriole nest in the elm was untenanted and

rocked back and forth like an empty cradle” (Hurst).

Symbol

• A concrete (physical object) that stands for an idea.– Eagle = Freedom– Red octagon = Stop

Symbolism

• An author’s use of a person, place, thing, or event that stands for itself AND for something else.

Theme

• The central message of a story.– What is the message of the story?– What lesson does the author want us to learn?