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What is the difference between first, second, and third person point of view?
Answer: First: 'I'; second: 'you'; third: 'he/she/they' — which can be limited (one character's thoughts) or omniscient (all).
Point of view shapes what the reader knows.
What is in medias res?
Answer: Beginning a story in the middle of the action.
Epics like 'The Odyssey' open this way.
What is flashback?
Answer: An interruption that shows events from an earlier time.
Provides background or motivation.
What is foreshadowing?
Answer: Hints or clues about events that will happen later.
Builds suspense and makes endings feel earned.
What is an unreliable narrator?
Answer: A narrator whose credibility is compromised, so readers must question the account.
Nick in 'The Great Gatsby' is often discussed as one.
What is a rhetorical question?
Answer: A question asked for effect, not for an answer.
'Who doesn't want to be happy?'
What are ethos, pathos, and logos?
Answer: Appeals to credibility, emotion, and logic.
Aristotle's modes of persuasion.
What is an allusion?
Answer: An indirect reference to another work, person, or event.
'He's a real Romeo' alludes to Shakespeare.
What is diction and syntax?
Answer: Diction is word choice; syntax is sentence structure and arrangement.
Both shape voice and tone.
What is tone vs mood?
Answer: Tone is the author's attitude toward the subject; mood is the feeling created for the reader.
Tone: sarcastic; mood: tense.
What is an allegory?
Answer: A narrative in which characters and events stand for abstract ideas or historical events.
'Animal Farm' represents the Russian Revolution.
What is symbolism?
Answer: Using an object, person, or event to represent a larger idea.
The green light in 'The Great Gatsby.'
What is a motif?
Answer: A recurring image, phrase, or idea that supports a theme.
Blood in 'Macbeth.'
What is a theme?
Answer: The central idea or underlying message of a work, stated as a general insight.
'Ambition corrupts' rather than just 'ambition.'
What is irony, and what are its three types?
Answer: A contrast between expectation and reality: verbal (saying the opposite), situational (opposite outcome), dramatic (audience knows what characters do not).
Dramatic irony drives 'Romeo and Juliet's' ending.
What is a metaphor?
Answer: A direct comparison that says one thing is another without 'like' or 'as'.
'Time is a thief.'
What is synecdoche vs metonymy?
Answer: Synecdoche uses a part for the whole ('all hands on deck'); metonymy substitutes something closely associated ('the crown' for the monarchy).
Both are forms of substitution.
What is an oxymoron?
Answer: Two contradictory words placed together.
'Deafening silence,' 'bittersweet.'
What is hyperbole?
Answer: Deliberate exaggeration for effect.
'I've told you a million times.'
What is personification?
Answer: Giving human qualities to non-human things.
'The wind whispered through the trees.'
What is a simile?
Answer: A comparison using 'like' or 'as'.
'Her smile was like sunshine.'
What is a frame story?
Answer: A story within a story, where an outer narrative introduces an inner one.
'The Canterbury Tales,' 'Frankenstein.'
What are the stages of plot structure?
Answer: Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution (denouement).
Freytag's pyramid.
What is a foil character?
Answer: A character who contrasts with another, usually the protagonist, to highlight traits.
Laertes is a foil to Hamlet.
What is enjambment?
Answer: A line of poetry that runs on into the next without a pause or punctuation.
Creates momentum or surprise.
What is a sonnet?
Answer: A 14-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a set rhyme scheme.
Shakespearean: three quatrains and a couplet (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG). Petrarchan: octave and sestet.
What is iambic pentameter?
Answer: A line of ten syllables in five pairs of unstressed-stressed beats (da-DUM × 5).
Shakespeare's sonnets and plays use it.
What is onomatopoeia?
Answer: A word that imitates the sound it describes.
'Buzz,' 'crash,' 'sizzle.'
What is assonance and consonance?
Answer: Assonance repeats vowel sounds within words; consonance repeats consonant sounds, especially at ends.
'Hear the mellow wedding bells' (assonance).
What is alliteration?
Answer: Repetition of initial consonant sounds in nearby words.
'Peter Piper picked a peck.'
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