Sample Literary Devices

The following passage has an example of which of the following of literary devices?

“He always calls me his Darling Daughter Deza, and I am supposed to answer that he is my Dearest Delightful Daddy. He calls Jimmie the Genuine, Gentle Jumpin’ Giant, and Jimmie’s supposed to call him his Fine Friendly Father Figure. Father also calls Mother the Marvelous Mammalian Matriarch, but she says she won’t respond because she refuses to play silly word games with such ‘a hardheaded husband who hasn’t heard how horrible he is’” (6).

Curtis, Christopher Paul. The Mighty Miss Malone New York: Random House, 2012.

• metaphor

• alliteration

• personification

• simile

Tags

CCSS.RL.2.6

CCSS.RL.8.3

“A few blocks away, inside St. Joseph’s Church, Gerald Coleman lay surrounded by splintered boards. When he looked up, he could see the sky. The tall roof, shaped like an upside-down V, was gone. The church’s arched windows gaped glassless. Unseen by Gerald, his friend Leo—the other alter boy—was trapped beneath a large wooden beam. Gerald scramble through a hole in the wall and ran for home” (61).

Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917 by Sally Walker New York: Scholastic, 2013

• alliteration

• metaphor

• personification

• imagery

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5

CCSS.L.5.5

CCSS.L.6.5

CCSS.L.7.5

CCSS.L.8.5

“Moose are large, and essentially insane with almost pathological hatred of the dogs, the sled, the musher, trees, trains, cars, and everything else as near as I can figure. When they come at you it’s like getting run over by Buick with legs” (62).

Paulsen, Gary. Woodsong. New York: Puffin Books, 1991.

• metaphor

• simile

• allusion

• personification

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5A

CCSS.L.5.5A

CCSS.RL.5.4

CCSS.W.11-12.2D

ge Four “I am a runner. That’s what I do. That’s who I am. Running is all I know, or want, or care about. It was a race around the soccer field in third grade that swept me into a real love of running. Breathing the sweet smell of spring grass. Sailing over dots of blooming clover. Beating all the boys. After that I couldn’t stop. I ran everywhere. Raced everyone. I loved the wind across my cheeks, through my hair. Running aired out my soul. It made me feel alive. And now? I’m stuck in this bed, knowing I’ll never run again” (6) Van Draanen, Wendelin. The Running Dream. New York: Random House, 2012.

• simile

• metaphor

• personification

• tone

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5A

CCSS.L.5.5A

CCSS.RL.5.4

CCSS.W.11-12.2D

“If Mrs. Butler or Sam is talking to me, I can’t hear either of them. The only thing I hear is the sound of my own pulse pounding in my ears. The way it would if I’d run all the way back. Just the boom-boom-boom of my heart and the strange swish of the sprinkler next door. A shush-shush followed by a metallic rat-a-tat-tat. Like firecrackers going off” (48).

Patterson, Valerie O. Operation Oleander. Boston: Clarion Books, 2013.

• Onomatopoeia, simile

• personification, allusion

• metaphor, silime

• allusion, tone

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5

CCSS.L.5.5

CCSS.L.6.5

CCSS.L.7.5

CCSS.L.8.5

“Every summer the local news carries stories about people who poison themselves accidentally by inhaling oleander fumes from a beach bonfire. Or people who use oleander twigs to roast hot dogs. But what had drawn me was the photo of the oleander growing next to the orphanage, all the way in Afghanistan. It bonded us all together—Ward, Dad, and me. Poisonous, yet, but in its own way, oleander is beautiful and it grows in places that more delicate plants can’t” (80).

Patterson, Valerie O. Operation Oleander. Boston: Clarion Books, 2013.

• symbolism

• metaphor

• stanza

• personification

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5

CCSS.L.5.5

CCSS.L.6.5

CCSS.L.7.5

CCSS.L.8.5

“People started screaming at the top of their lungs. Campers stormed the court, lifting us up on their shoulders as if we’d won the NBA championship (or the Nobel Prize). Kids were hugging each other. Kids were hugging Dr. Mal Dwayne got doused in Gatorade. It was a madhouse. A happy madhouse” (76).

Greenwald, Tommy. Charlie Joe Jacksons’ Guide to Summer Vacation. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2013.

• symbolism

• stanza

• simile

• metaphor

Tags

CCSS.L.4.5

CCSS.L.5.5

CCSS.L.6.5

CCSS.L.7.5

CCSS.L.8.5

I’d recently disagreed with her (Milania) over who had dibs on the gym for practice. Excuse me, but the basketball team can run laps in the hallway, whereas the wrestling squad, of which I was a member briefly until another recent misunderstanding, has to use the gym because that’s where the mats are located. And no one ever died waiting twenty minutes for someone else to get done using the gym. Enough said.

Except to Milania, who argued with me loudly enough for the wrestling coach to ask, in the interest of the team, for me to resign to make peace with Milania, because the girls’ JV basketball team were defending state champions, upsetting their practice time would lead directly to them losing state this year, which would then cause the Earth “to slip off its axis and slide out of its rotation and crash into the sun” (28).

Paulsen, Gary. Vote. New York: Wendy Lamb Books, 2013.

• personification

• simile

• hyperbole

• metaphor

Tags

CCSS.L.11-12.5A