Literary Toolbox 9/25

Today Monday, September 25th, American Literature class learned about a couple new literary devices. We first went over how literary and rhetorical devices help a reader better identify choices in writing, rhetorical analysis. Today's lesson was also about expanding our literary toolbox. To expand our literary toolbox we were split into 4 groups and each had a different kind of grouping of literary devices. For example, my group had the group of "power of sounds" but another group had the section "Making words into images"
. The section called "power of sounds" had literary devices such as, alliteration, onomatopoeia. The "making words into images" section had literary devices such as, simile, personification. In our groups we had to define each term, give an example from a sonnet or letter used in the classroom or use one from an outside source if we couldn't find one, and give our own example of the literary device.  I learned some literary devices that I had not even heard of before. One literary device that I had never heard of before was cacophony. Cacophony is a harsh discordant mixture of sounds. For our example from a sonnet or letter we said "your joy and laughter were contagious", contagious being the cacophony. For the example that we made up we said "the cackling distorted witch sat hunched over her cauldron." Cackling, distorted, hunched, and cauldron were the cacophony words; we noticed that for this specific literary device, it was very opinionated.
 This will help us in writing because it will expand on the whole story, tone, imagery and the writing will have more detail. This will also help us in understanding different kinds of writings from authors. Rhetorical analysis will help break down parts of a writing and understand different aspects of it. It could be used to identify theme, mood, tone, characters, conflicts, and genre. Literary devices are also a form of language for the author to express their ideas, and they help to convey the meaning of the writing and where the reader can try to interpret it or analyze it.

-Sarah Pineau