Rhetorical Terms Review The Scarlet Letter

“Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.” (ch. 1) -2 rhetorical devices

Metaphor Imagery

“her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon” (ch. 2)

hyperbole

“it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Anne Hutchinson” (ch. 1)

allusion

“It was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt [Chillingworth] and [Hester], than to greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her.” (ch. 3) Two rhetorical devices

Paradox and irony

“her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility” (ch. 3)

personification

“Hester Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy” (ch. 4)

metaphor

“had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves, --had the summer breeze murmured about it” (ch. 5)

personification

“But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eye—a human eye—upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared” (ch. 5)

Synecdoche

“a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy!” (ch. 8) 2 rhetorical devices

Asyndeton oxymoron

“ ‘ I could be well content that my labors, and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains should shortly end with me’” (ch. 9)

polysyndeton

“He now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom” (ch. 10)

Simile or analogy

“whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief” (ch. 13) 3 rhetorical devices

Alliteration Metaphor Synecdoche