Literary Devices In Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth

Analyzing literature is one of the most important steps to understanding the author’s purpose for writing a novel. When students analyze literature or write an analytical essay, they often mistake it as summarizing the plot of the book. However, analyzing literature is more in depth than just summarizing because many key aspects go into finding the hidden messages of a book. When students summarize the plot of a book, they are often missing many literary devices, such as metaphors, foreshadowing, and imagery.

In the essay Ground Zero by Suzanne Berne writes about her very personal experience visiting Ground Zero the place where the twin towers stood prior to the tragedy of 9/11. She uses rhetorical devices throughout her essay to make the piece feel incredibly intimate and emotional to the reader. She specifically uses imagery, tone, simile, and metaphor to explain her experience to Ground Zero in a deeper and meaningful way to her readers. Berne uses rhetorical devices in her essay Ground Zero to let her readers feel the same emotions and imagine the same things she saw on her visit to make the essay very intimate and realistic.

In the story “The Ascent,” Ron Rash begins the story with vivid imagery to set the calm, yet slightly unsettling scene of a young boy playing with his imaginary friend(s). Jared initially can be perceived as the average curious boy searching for the one thing no one else could find, a missing airplane. His imagination and situational aspects led to his decisions in the story. Jared was lost not physically, but mentally; he had no one to comfortably confide in and trust. His life was not an easy one as he dealt with both peer pressure and seclusion from home and school; he only felt safe behind the barriers of his mind and the misplaced airplane. Jared’s drug addicted parents had a negative effect on Jared’s mental and physical livelihood, resulting

In “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, the author uses simple, but powerful similes as a gateway to the reader understanding the setting of the story. “The Pedestrian” is the tale of a lone wandering man walking down the street at twilight. The man is then accused of being a criminal and taken back to his home, also known as “The Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.” The similes used in the story help readers fully understand and see the setting of “The Pedestrian”.

The author also effectively supports his thesis through pathos. To evoke strong emotion in his readers, Jones appeals to the audience’s feeling of vulnerability in their youth. Recognizing that during adolescence most people feel powerless, he tells engaging stories of his own and his son’s rise to power through comic books to give the audience something to connect to. As these stories are told, readers reminisce about those days, and feel joy in knowing that there was a happy ending. The feelings created make the audience look positively at the essay and relate to it.

In his latest novel, Jasper Jones (2009), Craig Silvey uses syntax, visual and olfactory imagery, personification and symbolism to describe the inside of Mad Jack Lionel’s dingy house, creating a sinister, gloomy and malicious mood. As this setting is observed through the youthful eyes of the Bildungsroman novel’s narrator, Charlie Bucktin, you receive the eye-opening thoughts and perceptions of a child combined with Silvey’s precisely crafted language, producing an impactful and evocative passage.

Imagine yourself shipwrecked upon an uninhabited island. The experience of being stranded will cause you to pose many questions, with the possibility of only one of those questions to being answered. One answered question is: what is the purpose of literature? Northrop Frye, within “Motive for Metaphor”, uses the analogy of being within an uninhabited island to examines the purpose of literature by connecting it to the purposes of language and their use within the different worlds and levels of the mind Frye sees present.

Next, Sedaris moved to his second literary device, where he made light out of his dark situation, by having his youngest sister lay out in the middle of the road to get their mother’s attention. This device is called black humor; for instance, “We chose a quiet dip between two hills, a spot where drivers ere almost required to skid out of control. She took her place, this six-year-old in a butter colored coat, and we gathered on the curb to watch.” (Sedaris 74). This literary device also keeps the audience engaged and creates personalities for different characters. Knowing how each character is in a story is important because the reader can sense sarcasm or even anger through body movements explained and also attaches the reader to certain characters that they like.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster is a book that explains there is more to literature than just a few words on a paper or a few pages in a book. Thomas Foster’s book portrays a relatable message to a wide based audience. This book is relatable for two reasons, the way it is written and the examples it uses. The book is written in a conversational manner, as if the reader was in a group discussion about books and writing. As for the examples, they are informative, descriptive, relative, and entertaining.

In Literature, rhetorical devices are often used to place emphasis on certain ideas or descriptions, to make an idea clearer, or to provide insight and to smoothly relate topics. Throughout his collection of essays, Scott Russell Sanders utilizes rhetorical devices in order to make his statements and ideas more vivid and clear for the reader. The rhetorical devices offer a more descriptive and insightful look into Sanders’ thoughts on his childhood, personality, and view of the world around him. Throughout the book, Sanders’ uses rhetorical devices ranging from allusions of events and people from the past to employing a varied tone in order give the audience a clear view into his thoughts

In the novel, Bradbury’s use of rhetorical devices emphasized different events that happened within the novel, but his themes are what warn the reader how violence and mass media are taking over our society. Rhetorical Analysis Bradbury use of asyndeton, polysyndeton, and fragments allows the

As once said by Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He believes people should read between the lines, and in the case of books, delve into what the author is trying to say by using symbols and imagery. To someone who does not examine the book, The Catcher in the Rye, it may seem to be about a “messed up” teenager who wanders around town and doesn’t care about life. But when a range of ______ are explored, one will find that this book has common themes of innocence, changing, growing up and also death. It is discovered in various _____ the novel, such as in The Museum of Natural History, his red hunting hat, and the ducks in the Central Park Lagoon.

Authors often apply literary devices in literature to convey special messages to the readers. Margaret Atwood portrays the use of literary devices in her poem, “Bored,” when she uses anecdote and metaphor. In the poem, Atwood effectively demonstrates how the use of literary devices creates a greater insight into the lack of power women have in a male-dominated society.

Another aspect of sound in this film was how it affected the story. By using sound dramatically in certain parts and not using it at all in other parts, sound gave this story an entity of its own. For example, during long stretches of film with mostly dialogue, there was no music played in the background, only a phone ringing in the distance, or the men's voices during their deliberation. These long silences also took place during editing shots of the town and images that surrounded this German city. This dramatic difference in sound was a revelation of how mood can be made by images and sound put together to make an incredible component.

The famous book The Maze Runner by James Smith Dashner, is the famous story about a young man named Thomas who wakes up in the middle of a metallic box that serves as an elevator with no memory of his past, the box opens up to a place called “the Glade” with 60 other boys staring back at him as he tries to run away pass them. Every thirty days a new boy or supplies arrive from the box and for three years they have lived together trying to find clues through the maze that surrounds them; but as they start losing hope it all changes when something unprecedented happens and a girl along with a note arrive through the box. The book along with amazing imagery and relevance to today’s world manages to attract more than just teenagers but anybody that is up for the challenge of the maze, and that is just the purpose of this paper to demonstrate multiple reason of why this book not only deserves to be read but it should hold a place in the literary canon.