Bell Ringer

Define the following terms

in your journal:
• Setting
• Character
• Plot
• Conflict
• Point of View
• Mood
• Theme
• Tone
• Figurative Language
Elements of a Story
What you need to know!
 Story Elements
Setting
Characters
Plot
Conflict
Resolution
Point of View
Theme
 Setting

• Setting is the “where and

when” of a story. It is the
time and place during
which the story takes place.
 Setting
Time and place are where the action
occurs
Details that describe:
✔ Furniture
✔ Scenery
✔ Customs
✔ Transportation
✔ Clothing
✔ Dialects
✔ Weather
✔ Time of day
✔ Time of year
The Functions of a Setting
To create a mood
or atmosphere
To show a reader
a different way of
life
To make action
seem more real
To be the source
of conflict or
struggle
To symbolize an
idea
 Mood
• Mood is the feeling that the author tries
to convey throughout the story. The
atmosphere or emotional condition
created by the piece, within the setting.
Does the author want the reader to be
frightened or sad, or does the story make
the reader laugh and think happy
thoughts?
• To figure out mood, examine how you feel
while reading the story. Often mood is
conveyed by the story’s setting.
 Characters
• The person,
animals,
and things
participatin
g in a story
 Characters
• Protagonist and antagonist are used to
describe characters.
• The protagonist is the main character of
the story, the one with whom the reader
identifies. This person is not necessary
“good”.
• The antagonist is the force in
opposition of the protagonist; this
person may not be “bad” or “evil”, but
he/she opposes the protagonist in a
significant way
 Plot (definition)
• Plot is the organized
pattern or sequence of
events that make up a
story.
• Plot is the literary
element that describes
the structure of a story.
It shows arrangement
of events and actions
within a story.
 Parts of a Plot
Exposition - introduction; characters,
setting and conflict (problem) are
introduced
Rising Action- events that occur as result
of central conflict
Climax- highest point of interest or
suspense of a story
Falling Action - tension eases; events
show the results of how the main
character begins to resolve the conflict
Resolution- loose ends are tied up; the
conflict is solved
 Plot Diagram
3

4
2
1
5
 1. Exposition
• This usually occurs at the beginning of a
short story. Here the characters are
introduced. We also learn about the setting
of the story. Most importantly, we are
introduced to the main conflict (main
problem).
 2. Rising Action
• This part of the story begins to develop the
conflict(s). A building of interest or suspense
occurs and leads to the climax. Complications
arise
 3. Climax
• This is the turning point of the story. Usually the
main character comes face to face with a conflict.
The main character will change in some way.
This is the most intense moment.
 4. Falling Action
• Action that
follows the
climax and
ultimately leads
to the resolution
 5. Resolution
• The conclusion; all
loose ends are tied up.
• Either the character
defeats the problem,
learns to live with the
problem, or the
problem defeats the
character.
 Putting It All Together
1. Exposition Beginning of
Story
2. Rising Action

Middle of Story
3. Climax

4. Falling Action
End of Story
5. Resolution
 Diagram of Plot
Climax

Fal
e
pm

Act

lin
nt velo

io

g
n
Ac sing
De

Introducti n
Ri /
tio
on/ Resolution
Exposition
Setting,
characters, and
conflict are
introduced
Special Techniques used in a Story
Suspense- excitement, tension, curiosity
Foreshadowing- hint or clue about what
will happen in story
Flashback- interrupts the normal
sequence of events to tell about
something that happened in the past
Symbolism – use of specific objects or
images to represent ideas
Personification – when you make a thing,
idea or animal do something only
humans do
Surprise Ending - conclusion that reader
does not expect
Conflict
Conflict is the dramatic struggle
between two forces in a story.
Without conflict, there is no plot.
 Conflict
Conflict is a problem that must be
solved; an issue between the
protagonist and antagonist forces. It
forms the basis of the plot.
Conflicts can be external or internal
✔ External conflict- outside force may
be person, group, animal, nature, or
a nonhuman obstacle
✔ Internal conflict- takes place in a
character’s mind
 Types of External
Conflict
Character vs Character

Character vs Nature

Character vs Society

Character vs Fate
 Type of Internal Conflict
Character vs. Self
 Point of View
• First Person Point of View- a
character from the story is
telling the story; uses the
pronouns “I” and “me”
• Third Person Point of View- an
outside narrator is telling the
story; uses the pronouns “he”,
“she”, “they”
 Types of Third-Person
Point of View
• Third-Person • Third-Person
Limited Omniscient
• The narrator • The narrator knows
knows the the thoughts and
thoughts and feeling of ALL the
feelings on only characters in a story.
ONE character in a
story.
 Theme
The theme is the central, general
message, the main idea, the
controlling topic about life or
people the author wants to get
across through a literary work
To discover the theme of a story,
think big. What big message is the
author trying to say about the world
in which we live?
What is this story telling me about
how life works, or how people
 The Theme is also
• the practical lesson ( moral) that we
learn from a story after we read it.
The lesson that teaches us what to
do or how to behave after you have
learned something from a story or
something that has happened to you.
Example: The lesson or teaching of
the story is be careful when you’re
offered something for nothing.
Any questions?
Figurative Language
“Figuring it Out”
 Figurative and Literal
Language
Literally: words function exactly as
defined
The car is blue.
He caught the football.
Figuratively: figure out what it means
I’ve got your back.
You’re a doll.
^Figures of Speech
 Simile
Comparison of two things using “like” or
“as.”

Examples
The metal twisted like a ribbon.
She is as sweet as candy.
 Important!
Using “like” or “as” doesn’t make a
simile.

A comparison must be made.

Not a Simile: I like pizza.

Simile: The moon is like a pizza.

 Metaphor
Two things are compared without using
“like” or “as.”

Examples

All the world is a stage.

Men are dogs.
Her heart is stone.
 Personification
Giving human traits to objects or ideas.

Examples

The sunlight danced.

Water on the lake shivers.
The streets are calling me.
 Hyperbole
Exaggerating to show strong feeling or
effect.

Examples
I will love you forever.
My house is a million miles away.
She’d kill me.
 Understatement
Expression with less strength than
expected.
The opposite of hyperbole.

I’ll be there in one second.

This won’t hurt a bit.

 Onomatopoeia
• A word that “makes” a sound
• SPLAT
• PING
• SLAM
• POP
• POW
 Idiom
• A saying that isn’t meant to be taken
literally.
• Doesn’t “mean” what it says
• Don’t be a stick in the mud!
• You’re the apple of my eye.
• I have an ace up my sleeve.
 Pun
• A form of “word play” in
which words have a double
meaning.
• I wondered why the
baseball was getting bigger
and then it hit me.
• I’m reading a book about
anti-gravity. It’s impossible
to put it down.
• I was going to look for my
missing watch, but I didn’t
 Proverb

• A figurative saying in which a bit of

“wisdom” is given.
• An apple a day keeps the doctor
away
• The early bird catches the worm
 Oxymoron
• When two words are put together
that contradict each other.
“Opposites”
• Jumbo Shrimp
• Pretty Ugly
• Freezer Burn
 Quiz
On a separate sheet of paper…

1. I will put an example of figurative

language on the board.
2. You will write whether it is an simile,
metaphor, personification,
hyperbole, pun, proverb, idiom,
onomatopoeia, oxymoron or
understatement.
3. You can use your notes.
 1

He drew a line as straight as an arrow.

 2

Knowledge is a kingdom and all who

learn are kings and queens.
 3

Can I see you for a second?

 4

The sun was beating down on me.

 5

A flag wags like a fishhook there in the

sky.
 6
I'd rather take baths
with a man-eating shark,
or wrestle a lion
alone in the dark,
eat spinach and liver,
pet ten porcupines,
than tackle the homework,
my teacher assigns.
 7
Ravenous and savage
from its long
polar journey,

the North Wind

is searching
for food—
 8
Dinner is on the house.
 9

Can I have one of your chips?

 10
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
 11.
• The clouds smiled down at me.
 12.
• SPLAT!
 13.
• She is as sweet as candy
 14.
• I could sleep forever!
 15.
• He drove his expensive car into a
tree and found out how the
Mercedes bends
 16.
• I used to have a fear of hurdles, but I
got over it
 17.
• The wheat field was a sea of gold.
 18.
• The streets called to him.
 19.
• POP!
 20.
• She was dressed to the nines.
 21.
• The early bird catches the worm.
 22.
• Old news
 23.
• Your face is killing me!
 24.
• She was as white as a ghost.
 25.
• She has a skeleton in her closet.
Elements of
Poetry
 Elements of Poetry
• What is poetry?
• Poetry is not prose. Prose is the ordinary
language people use in speaking or writing.
• Poetry is a form of literary expression that
captures intense experiences or creative
perceptions of the world in a musical language.
• Basically, if prose is like talking, poetry is like
singing.
• By looking at the set up of a poem, you can see
the di erence between prose and poetry.
Distinguishing Characteristics of
Poetry
• Unlike prose which has a narrator,
poetry has a speaker.
• A speaker, or voice, talks to the reader.
The speaker is not necessarily the poet.
It can also be a fictional person, an
animal or even a thing
Example
But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you.
from “Once Upon a Time” by Gabriel
Okara
Distinguishing Characteristics of
Poetry
• Poetry is also formatted di erently
from prose.
– A line is a word or row of words that may
or may not form a complete sentence.
– A stanza is a group of lines forming a
unit. The stanzas in a poem are
separated by a space.
Example
Open it.

Go ahead, it won’t bite.

Well…maybe a little.
from “The First Book” by Rita
Dove
 Figures of Speech
• A figure of speech is a word or expression
that is not meant to be read literally.

• A simile is a figure of speech using a word

such as like or as to compare seemingly
unlike things.
Example
Does it stink like rotten meat?
from “Harlem” by Langston
Hughes
 Figures of Speech
• A metaphor also compares seemingly
unlike things, but does not use like or
as. Example
the moon is a white sliver
from “I Am Singing Now” by Luci Tapahonso

• Personification attributes human like

characteristics to an animal, object,
or idea.
Example
A Spider sewed at Night
from “A Spider sewed at Night” by Emily Dickinson
 Figures of Speech
• Hyperbole – a figure of speech in
which great exaggeration is used for
emphasis or humorous e ect.
Example
“You’ve asked me a million times!”

• Imagery is descriptive language that

applies to the senses – sight, sound,
touch, taste, or smell. Some images
appeal to more than one sense.
 Sound Devices
• Alliteration is the repetition of
consonant sounds at the beginning
of words.
• Assonance is the repetition of vowel
sounds within a line of poetry.
• Onomatopoeia is the use of a word
or phrase, such as “hiss” or “buzz”
that imitates or suggests the sound
of what it describes.
Example of Sound Devices
“In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger”
from “Eating Together” by Li-Young
Lee

And the stars never rise but I

see the bright eyes
from “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe
 Rhyme
• Rhyme is the repetition of the same
stressed vowel sound and any
succeeding sounds in two or more words.
• Internal rhyme occurs within a line of
poetry.
• End rhyme occurs at the end of lines.
• Rhyme scheme is the pattern of end
rhymes that may be designated by
assigning a di erent letter of the
alphabet to each new rhyme
 Example
“All mine!" Yertle cried. "Oh, the things I now A
rule! A
I'm king of a cow! And I'm king of a mule! B
I'm king of a house! And what's more, beyond B
that, C
I'm king of a blueberry bush and cat! C
I'm Yertle the Turtle! Oh, marvelous me!
For I am the ruler of all that I see!”
from “Yertle the Turtle”
by Dr. Seuss
“Penelope” by Dorothy
Parker
In the pathway of the sun,
A
B
In the footsteps of the breeze,
A
Where the world and sky are
one, B
He shall ride the silver seas, C
He shall cut the glittering D
wave. D
I shall sit at home, and rock; E
Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock; E
Brew my tea, and snip my thread; C
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.
 Rhythm and Meter
• Rhythm is the pattern of sound created by
the arrangement of stressed and unstressed
syllables in a line. Rhythm can be regular or
irregular.
• Meter is a regular pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables which sets the overall
rhythm of certain poems. Typically,
stressed syllables are marked with / and
unstressed syllables are marked with ∪ .
• In order to measure how many syllables are
per line, they are measured in feet. A foot
consists of a certain number of syllables
forming part of a line of verse.
 Iambic Pentameter
• The most common type of meter is called
iambic pentameter
• An iamb is a foot consisting of an initial
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
syllable. For example, return, displace, to
love, my heart.
• A pentameter is a line of verse containing
5 metrical feet.
 Signi cance of Iambic
Pentameter
• Iambic Pentameter is signi cant to the
study of poetry because
• 1. It is the closest to our everyday speech
• 2. In addition, it mimics the sound of heart
beat; a sound common to all human beings.
• 3. Finally, one of the most in uential writers
of our times uses iambic pentameter in all
that he writes – William Shakespeare.
Example #1 Examples
And death is better, as the millions
know,

Than dandru , night-starvation, or B.

O

from “Letter to Lord Byron” by W.H.

Example
Auden#2
When you are old and grey and full of sleep

And nodding by the re, take down this book.

W.B. Yeats
 Connotation and Denotation
Connotation - the emotional and imaginative
association surrounding a word.

Denotation - the strict dictionary meaning of

a word.

Example: You may live in a house, but we live

in a home.
Which of the following has a more
favorable connotation?
thrifty penny-pinching

pushy aggressive

politician statesman

chef cook

slender skinny
 Elements of Poetry
When we explore the connotation and
denotation of a poem, we are looking at the
poet’s diction.

Diction – the choice of words by an author or

poet.

Many times, a poet’s diction can help unlock

the tone or mood of the poem.
 Elements of Poetry: Tone and
Although many times weMood
use the words mood and tone
interchangeably, they do not necessarily mean the same
thing.
Mood – the feeling or atmosphere that a poet creates.
Mood can suggest an emotion (ex. “excited”) or the
quality of a setting (ex. “calm”, “somber”) In a poem,
mood can be established through word choice, line
length, rhythm, etc.
Tone – a re ection of the poet’s attitude toward the
subject of a poem. Tone can be serious, sarcastic,
humorous, etc.
 Narrative Poetry
• Narrative poetry is verse that tells a story.
• Two of the major examples of narrative poetry
include:
• Ballads – a song or poem that tells a story. Folk
ballads, which typically tell of an exciting or
dramatic event, were composed by an anonymous
singer or author and passed on by word of mouth
for generations before written down. Literary
ballads are written in imitation of folk ballads, but
usually given an author.
• Epics – a long narrative poem on a great and serious
subject that is centered on the actions of a heroic
gure
 Dramatic Poetry
• Dramatic poetry is poetry in which one or
more characters speak.
• Each speaker always addresses a speci c
listener.
• This listener may be silent (but identi able),
or the listener may be another character who
speaks in reply.
• Usually the con ict that the speaker is
involved with is either an intense or
emotional.
 Lyric Poetry
• Lyric poetry is poetry that expresses a
speaker’s personal thoughts and feelings.
• Lyric poems are usually short and musical.
• This broad category covers many poetic
types and styles, including haikus, sonnets,
free verse and many others.
 Haikus
• The traditional Japanese haiku is an
unrhymed poem that contains exactly 17
syllables, arranged in 3 lines of 5, 7, 5
syllables each.
• However, when poems written in
Japanese are translated into another
language, this pattern is often lost.
• The purpose of a haiku is to capture a
ash of insight that occurs during a
solitary observation of nature.
 Examples of Haikus
Since morning glories
hold my well-bucket hostage
I beg for water
- Chiyo-ni First autumn morning:
the mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face.
- Kijo Murakami
 Sonnets
• Background of Sonnets
• Form invented in Italy.
• Most if not all of Shakespeare’s sonnets are
about love or a theme related to love.
• Sonnets are usually written in a series with
each sonnet a continuous subject to the next.
(Sequels in movies)
 Sequence of Sonnets
• Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets and can be broken up
by the characters they address.
• The Fair Youth: Sonnets 1 – 126 are devoted to a young man of
extreme physical beauty. The rst 17 sonnets urge the young
man to pass on his beauty to the next generation through
children. From sonnet 18 on, Shakespeare shifts his viewpoint
and writes how the poetry itself will immortalize the young
man and allow his beauty to carry on.
• The Dark Lady: Sonnets 127 – 154 talk about an irresistible
woman of questionable morals who captivates the young poet.
These sonnets speak of an a air between the speaker and her,
but her unfaithfulness has hurt the speaker.
• The Rival Poet: This character shows up during the fair youth
series. The poet sees the rival poet as someone trying to take
his own fame and the poems refer to his own anxiety and
insecurity.
 Structure of Sonnets
The traditional Elizabethan or
Shakespearean sonnet consists of
fourteen lines, made up of three
quatrains (stanzas of 4 lines each) and a
nal couplet (two line stanza). Sonnets
are usually written in iambic pentameter.
The quatrains traditionally follow an
abab rhyme scheme, followed by a
rhyming couplet.
Sonnet 18
Example
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
 Free Verse
• Free verse is poetry that has no xed
pattern of meter, rhyme, line length, or
stanza arrangement.
• When writing free verse, a poet is free to
vary the poetic elements to emphasize an
idea or create a tone.
• In writing free verse, a poet may choose
to use repetition or similar grammatical
structures to emphasize and unify the
 Free Verse
• While the majority of popular poetry today is
written as free verse, the style itself is not new.
Walt Whitman, writing in the 1800’s, created
free verse poetry based on forms found in the
King James Bible.
• Modern free verse is concerned with the
creation of a brief, ideal image, not the re ned
ordered (and arti cial, according to some
critics) patterns that other forms of poetry
encompass.
 Example of Free Verse
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a con rmed case,
He will never sleep any more as he did it in the cot in his mother’s
bedroom;
The dour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns is quid of tobacco, his eyes blurred with the manuscript;
The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in the pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the stand….the drunkard nods by the barroom
stove…

Excerpt from “Song of Myself” (section 15)

Walt Whitman