Figurative Language In The Invisible Man

Serbian poet, Dejan Stojanovic, once stated, “Devil and God – two sides of the same face.” When looking at Chicago during the Columbian Exposition, there were two sides of Chicago known as the white city and the black city. The white city was the fairgrounds where the World Fair occurred. The black city, however, is the rest of Chicago where the crime, poverty, disease, and filth was represented. Erik Larson constructs the black and white city in Devil in the White City by incorporating figurative language, imagery, and juxtaposition.

The excerpt from page 112 of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison uses syntax, imagery and diction to show invisible man’s voice.

In the novel The Devil in the White City written by Erik Larson, he entails there is a constant war between good and evil in Chicago 1893, each battle won is a life being made, or slaughtered “There are two wolves battling us all right now…. One’s good, the other is evil. If you’re wondering which wolf inside will succeed, simple, it’s the one that you feed…” by Ronnie Radke. Larson paints the white city’s atmosphere as preppy, educated, society that consists of architects like Daniel Burnham, while the black city portrays a bleak, poverty, society that consists of the serial killer H. H. Holmes. The reader experiences a journey between heaven and hell throughout the entirety of the novel, a dream-like euphoria in the white city, and the nightmare-like misery for the black. The difference between the two contradicting cities is so great that Larson switches the perspective of the serial killer, H. H. Holmes, and the genius architect, Daniel Burnham, throughout the book; painting this image to portray these differences in the white and black cities by using juxtaposition, figurative language, and imagery.

Crossing the Wire is a novel that tells a story of a boy, Victor, who left Mexico to go to the North to find work and support his family. His family and the people in Mexico were having trouble with the price of the crop they plant; the price keep going down and does not seem like it will ever go up again. Himself, the only man of the family, has to go to the States and find work there so he could send money home. He has gone through many struggles such as: almost end up in jail by the Mexican police, jump off a moving train, stay in a mountain at its winter time, walk through the desert when the heat is extremely high, being chased by the drug smugglers. Not only that, he need to send money before “The Day of the Dead,” or

Have you ever wanted to read about the evanescence of life? In Erik Larson’s educating 2003 nonfiction novel Devil in the White City, set in the City of Chicago during the 1893 World’s Fair, also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition, he tells the side-by-side story of a striving architect and a twisted serial killer. In his work, Larson uses figurative language, imagery, and juxtaposition to capture the serial killer’s, H.H. Holmes, psychotic nature, and explain how those around him find him to be so enticing.

Throughout the novel, Wiesel's figurative language displays how hope got him through some of the atrocities of the Holocaust. An example where their hope is brought up in the novel is when the anti-Jewish laws are put in place in Wiesel's hometown, he states that, "To the very last moment, a germ of hope stayed alive in our hearts" (Wiesel 25). Wiesel uses the metaphor "germ of hope" to figuratively describe how the amount of hope was not abundant, but it never completely vanished. He states that this hope lasted till the last moment, which also implies that this is what got the Jews through the Holocaust. An instance where Wiesel's language displays what hope got him through is when he describes the hangings that he witnessed, upon which he reflects that the soup tasted like corpses that evening (Wiesel 72).

A great American mathematician, John W. Tukey, once said “The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.” This quote relates to stories because the author can use figurative language and descriptive language to paint a picture in the reader’s head. By using these, the author can almost assure the reader that they have the same vision as the author has. In the novel The Pigman by Paul Zindel, many examples of figurative language and descriptive adjectives are present to help the reader envision the story in their minds and to develop characters.

Night contains a significant amount of figurative language. Select 3 examples from the text to analyze. In analyzing each example, be sure to explain how the specific example impacts the text. (How does it affect the reader? How does it affect the reading experience? Why did Wiesel make that specific choice?) Please use a different type of figurative language for each example.

Manhunt is classified as literary nonfiction, however it lacks some characteristics that there would traditionally be in a piece of literary nonfiction. For instance, the story is very factual and a lot of veracity is shown throughout. Swanson adds a lot of credible primary sources like letters, newspapers, and interviews to make the story factual. He cross referenced all of the documents which allowed him to write a very credible story and, he shows all of the primary sources at the end of the book in a nine page bibliography. Also, the literary approach to language is very prominent in Manhunt. Swanson puts in a lot of figurative language including allusions, similes and metaphors. One example is that the title of chapter seven is titled

The novel “Night”, an autobiography about Elie Wiesel’s experience during the Holocaust, a genocide that killed millions of Jewish people. In the novel “Night”, Elie Wiesel develops the character Elie through the use of explicit details, emotional language, and powerful diction in order to show that Elie and the Jewish people had discarded their faith in god after feeling neglected throughout the novel.

Muhammad Ali once stated, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see”. Authors use different writing techniques to compare things so that the reader can interpret more of the what the author is visualizing when they wrote their books. In the story “Pigman” the author, Paul Zindel uses figurative language to develop the mood and the characters.

Mark Twain once said, “A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.” Figurative language and descriptive adjectives can help show what the character is feeling, acting, and explain what they look like. In the book “The Pigman” by Paul Zindel he uses figurative language and descriptive adjectives to develop the characters, setting, and mood. In “The Pigman” the author uses figurative language to develop the mood and emphasize how the characters look and act.

“And it was as though I myself was being dispossessed of some painful yet precious thing which I could not bear to lose; something confounding, like a rotted tooth that one would rather suffer indefinitely than endure the short, violent eruption of pain that would mark its removal. And with this sense of dispossession came a pang of vague recognition: this junk, these shabby chairs, these heavy, old-fashioned pressing irons, zinc wash tubs with dented bottoms-all throbbed within me with more meaning than there should have been...” (Ellison 273).

Of Mice & Men George and Lennie are the best of friends who are truly more like brothers. There are many emotions in Of Mice & Men (1937), but they lean more to the sad side of things. Figurative language, setting, and characterization play a big role in why George ended up doing the right thing. A primary strategy Steinbeck uses to make the reader see the George did the right thing is figurative language. Steinbeck uses a boat load of figurative language in his novel.

However, the invisibility that Griffin viewed as power ultimately is a poison as the invisible man must sacrifice greatly for his for his power. The invisible man schemes grand dreams that can be realized through his invisibility but discovers that “no doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got” (Wells 121). Because of his invisibility, the invisible man finds himself ostracized, in a state of danger, and no longer able to enjoy everyday customs like eating lunch at a restaurant. Griffin finds himself even unable to celebrate his discovery with others with fear of that they might steal credit for his feat or that the exposure might cause a rejection. Due to his invisible state, his “grandest ambitions are trivialized and frustrated by the very discovery that spurred those ambitions” (Beiderwell). The anger, madness, and mania that envelop the invisible man all stem from the abuse of his