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Figurative language in stories
Figurative language and theme english 12
An essay about figurative language
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During the 1830s, the Great Depression took over America’s brightness and joy, shattering the American spirit. Citizens searched for a light to help people get their lives back together. During this searching, they found Seabiscuit to bring them hope. Seabiscuit is a racing horse that received the right trainer and rider to make him a legend. Seabiscuit’s story is beautifully portrayed in Laura Hillenbrand’s book, Seabiscuit.
Hoot, by Carl Hiaasan, in Florida, a teenage boy named Roy Eberhardt gets bullied on his way to middle school riding the school bus. Roy just moved there from Montana, so he has been having trouble making friends, and the fact that he has been targeted by the school bully, Dana Matherson, who loves to hector new kids, does not help. On this day, Dana is smashing Roy’s head into the bus window, and seeing as Roy can’t move he is forced to stare out of the window. He notices a boy about the same age running incredibly quickly, without shoes alongside the bus. Roy becomes curious of the boy, and vows to figure out who he is.
Throughout this excerpt, the use of imagery is vital to the evolution of Chief Bromden. Chief wakes up with the sudden urge to do something. As he walks around, he feels the cold tiles against his feet, and he realizes how many times he had walked on the tiles before, but had never felt it at all. “I walked down the windows to one where the shade popped softly in and out with the breeze, and I pressed my head against the mesh.” In this paragraph the imagery of the smells and Chief presses his head against the mesh, appeals to the senses of smell and touch.
A child leaves in the morning to work endlessly until midnight. She arrives home with work-torn hands and tired eyes as she prepares for another day of weaving, spinning, sewing, braiding, and knitting. This image of a child having her life toiled away in a factory is one that Florence Kelley does not tolerate. In her speech for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she opposes the unfair and immoral treatment of children in labor. Kelley applies figurative language and pathos in her speech in order to push women to encourage men to vote for strict child labor laws, and to convince women of the need for their suffrage.
Most well written and descriptive stories use many disparate tools to make it better. The author of the story The Veldt used figurative language, imagery, and diction to foreshadow the tragic ending of the story. In the end the children use the lions from Africa to slaughter their parents ,and you can kind of guess that the children are planning something evil because of the descriptions and figurative language in the story. The children give off a very negative aura throughout the whole story that leads you to believe that something cynical is occuring.
Every good writer has their own special secret, but all the greatest writers have the same secret. They all share the secret of using very strong rhetorical devices. In this short passage of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's novel The Yearling, that is known for winning a Pulitzer Prize, she uses powerful rhetorical devices, but the most fervid devices that were found in the passage was syntax, figurative language, and sensory details. With using those rhetorical devices it paved the way for her winning the Pulitzer Prize. Rawling used syntax, figurative language, and sensory detail in this passage.
The Book Thief is a novel set in the era of the Holocaust. Liesel Meminger has to survive through hard times after being left in foster care by her mother. The overall theme of the story is that words can have a powerful effect, especially with a different tone of voice, inspiring a multitude of feelings in people, such as fear or hope. Words always manage to seem underwhelming, but twisting them in the correct way yields results. For example, page 110 features a speech from a Nazi official: “‘We put an end to the disease that has been spread through Germany for the last twenty years, if not more!’
It is shocking how quickly people can change from being calm to becoming savages. In Lord of the Flies, a plane crashed and some schoolboys got stranded on an island where they have to survive on their own but end up failing and become savages. Chapter 9 concluded with having Simon go out to find the beast and discovers there is none; on his way back everybody is dancing in the rain and eating meat, but when they see this figure coming down, they think it’s the beast so they end up killing the it, which was actually Simon. Therefore, the events above connect to the theme due to the cause of fear that got inside of them once they saw a dark figure and turned them into bloodthirsty savages.
The book The Kite Runner is written by Khaled Hosseini and has been deemed one of the New York Times best sellers. The story of The Kite Runner is set in the backdrop of the fall of Afghanistan’s monarchy, Soviet military intervention, and the rise of Taliban regime. Khaled Hosseini said during an interview about his books that “The Kite Runner was a father-son story”. There are many themes that can be applicable to The Kite Runner. I think that the theme of this book is Amir trying to redeem himself.
“‘My dear Bilbo! he said. Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit you once were’”(302). Tolkien uses this in the book because The Hobbit is based around the very change of Bilbo and his transformation into a hero following him along his journey.
seems as if it is a mad man who keeps on repeating the same thing over and over again. This adds to the dark and madness that seems to be taking place within the narrator’s mind. He seems to be completely crazy by this moment in time. This accompanies the dark and depressive tone of the poem.
The author Khaled Hosseini used figurative language in many ways throughout the novel. The first example would be personification. Personification was used when the author said “Then I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring the sky. They danced above the trees on the west end of the park” (Hosseini, 1). Similes and metaphors are used for comparison, for instance the novel stated “Baba was like the widower who re-marries but can’t let go of his dead wife” (Hosseini, 129).
Romeo and Juliet, who were brought up in rivaling houses, fall irrationally and madly in love. They elope, but Juliet is supposed to marry someone else. She plots to escape with Romeo, by faking her death but he never receives the note with this information. Romeo believes Juliet is dead when he finds her, and kills himself; Juliet joins him when she wakes up to his corpse. Author William Shakespeare writes the play in a way that constantly reminds the audience that the lovers were doomed from the start and their fate is to never be together.
In the first Act of A Midsummer Night's Dream, main characters are introduced in a way that sets the tone for the rest of the play. Egeus' first speech, found on lines 23 to 46, is a perfect example of this; through his speech themes of domination and control, and his accusatory themes, he affirms the accepted positions of power of his time. Language and grammar used here all give the reader an important first impression. Starting with the first line, Egeus states "Full of vexation come I". By placing the phrase "full of vexation" first, the vexation — vexation over the disobedience of his daughter — is emphasized.
Concrete Details/Imagery Gallien starts to notice the settings around him while he is on his way to drop Alex off. “For the first few miles the stampede trail was well graded and led past cabins scattered among weedy stands of spruce and aspen. Beyond the last of the log shacks, however, the road rapidly deteriorated” (Kraukaur 2). This quote creates of visual of the quick change from rural civilization to deep and dense forest.