Aporia, metonymy, antimetabole, epistrophe. These are literary devices that we often use without even realizing it. You can also check out last week’s post for four more examples.
Aporia – This rhetorical device involves expressing uncertainty or doubt, usually to make a point. Here are some examples from literature:
- From Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”: True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?
- From Frost’s “The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
- From Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind”: How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
Metonymy – This figure of speech involves replacing a word with another word closely related to the original concept. It is similar to synecdoche, which uses a part to represent the whole or vice versa.
- They had a Monet hanging on the wall (painting).
- Italian is my mother tongue (language).
- Wall Street is doing well today (the stock market).
Antimetabole – This figure of speech repeats a phrase with the words in reverse order.
- Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
- When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
- Stephen Stills’ “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”
- Dumas’s “All for one, and one for all.”
Epistrophe – This involves the repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses.
- I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
- Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people”
- Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman”
She takes just like a woman, yes
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl
