Literary Terms

We will be using these literary terms throughout the school

year.

We will use the following terms:

Character Antagonist Protagonist

Imagery Mood Plot Tone

Rising Action Climax Falling Action

Resolution Conflict Setting

Flashback Foreshadowing Suspense

Point of View Theme Metaphor Simile

Oxymoron Personification Alliteration

Character

A character is a person or an animal that takes part in the action of a literary work.

Antagonist

The Antagonist is a character or force in conflict with a main character, or protagonist.

Do you know any Antagonists???

On your paper take a few minutes to write down some Antagonists that you can recall from movies, television shows, and video games

Remember the Antagonist is in conflict with the Protagonist or, main character!

Helpful hint – you should now know why people use the saying “Don’t antagonize me!”

Protagonist

The Protagonist is the main character in a literary work

Can you name some famous Protagonists that are found in literature?

ImageryImagery is words or phrases

that appeal to one or more of the five senses. Writers

use imagery to describe how their subjects look,

sound, feel, taste, and smell.

MOODMood, or atmosphere, is the feeling

created in the reader by a literary work or passage. Writer’s use many

devices to create mood, including images, dialogue, setting, and plot.

Often, a writer creates a mood at the beginning of a work and then sustains the mood throughout.

Sometimes, however, the mood of the work changes dramatically.

PlotPlot is the sequence of events. The first event

causes the second, the second causes the third, and so forth.

In most novels, dramas, short stories, and narrative poems, the plot involves both characters and a central conflict.

The plot usually begins with an exposition that introduces the setting, the characters, and the basic situation. This is introduced and developed. The conflict then increases until it reaches a high point of interest or suspense, the climax. The climax is followed by the falling action, or end, of the central conflict. Any events that occur during the falling action make up the resolution.

PLOTLINE

ExpositionResolution

Ris

ing A

ctio

n

Climax

Falling Action

Conflict Introduced

Rising Action

Rising Action is the part of the plot that begins to occur as soon as the conflict is introduced. The rising action adds complications to the conflict and increases reader interest.

ClimaxThe Climax is the point of

greatest emotional intensity, interest, or suspense in the plot of a narrative. The climax typically comes at the turning point in a story or drama.

Falling Action

Falling Action is the action that typically follows the climax and reveals its results.

Resolution

The Resolution is the part of the plot that concludes the falling action by revealing or suggesting the outcome of the conflict.

Conflict

Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces in a story or play. There are two types of conflict that exist in literature.

Internal Conflictvs

External Conflict-Internal conflict exists within the mind of a character who

is torn between different courses of action.

Man vs. Himself

-External conflict exists when a character struggles against some outside force, such as another character, nature, society, or fate.

Man vs. Man

Man vs. Nature

Flashback

A flashback is a literary device in which an earlier episode, conversation, or event is inserted into the sequence of events. Often flashbacks are presented as a memory of the narrator or of another character.

The movie Titanic is told almost entirely in a flashback.

What are some other films that contain flashback to help tell stories?

Holes

Willy Wonka

Think of some more…

Flashback continued…

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is the author’s use of clues to hint at what might happen later in the story. Writers use foreshadowing to build their readers’ expectations and to create suspense. This is used to help readers prepare for what is to come.

Suspense

Suspense is the growing interest and excitement readers experience while awaiting a climax or resolution in a work of literature. It is a feeling of anxious uncertainty about the outcome of events. Writers create suspense by raising questions in the minds of their readers.

Point of View

Point of View is the perspective, or vantage point, from which a story is told. It is the relationship of the narrator to the story.

First-person is told by a character who uses the first-person pronoun “I”.

Third-person limited point of view is the point of view where the narrator uses third-person pronouns such as “he” and “she” to refer to the characters.

SettingThe setting of a literary work is the time and

place of the action.

The setting includes all the details of a place and time – the year, the time of day, even the weather. The place may be a specific country, state, region, community, neighborhood, building, institution, or home.

Details such as dialect, clothing, customs, and modes of transportation are often used to establish setting.

In most stories, the setting serves as a backdrop – a context in which the characters interact. The setting of a story often helps to create a particular mood, or feeling.

Theme

The theme of a literary work is its central message, concern, or purpose. A theme can usually be expressed as a generalization, or general statement, about people or life. The theme may be stated directly by the writer although it is more often presented indirectly. When the theme is stated indirectly, the reader must figure out the theme by looking carefully at what the work reveals about the people or about life.

Tone

Tone is a reflection of a writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject of a poem, story, or other literary work. Tone may be communicated through words and details that express particular emotions and that evoke and emotional response from the reader.

For example, word choice or phrasing may seem to convey respect, anger, lightheartedness, or sarcasm.

Metaphor

A Metaphor is a type of speech that compares or equates two or more things that have something in common. A metaphor does NOT use like or as.

Example: Life is a bowl

of cherries.

Simile

A Simile is another figure of speech that compares seemingly unlike things. Simile’s DO use the words like or as.

Example: Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard.

Oxymoron

An Oxymoron is a figure of speech that is a combination of seemingly contradictory words.

Examples: Same difference

Pretty ugly

Roaring silence

Personification

Personification is a figure of speech in which an animal, object, force of nature, or idea is given human qualities or characteristics.

Example: Tears began to fall from the dark clouds.

Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of sounds, most often consonant sounds, at the beginning of words. Alliteration gives emphasis to words.

Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers