Schemes & Tropes Examples

• He tried to make the law clear, precise and equitable.

• … for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Protection, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. — Declaration of Independence

Parallelism

• [We] shall support any friend, oppose any foe. 

• Though studious, he was popular; though argumentative, he was modest; though inflexible, he was candid; and though metaphysical, yet orthodox. — Dr. Samuel Johnson London Chronicle, May  2, 1769

Antithesis

• "Let a man acknowledge his obligations to himself, his family, his country, and his God."

Climax

• Backward run the sentences, till reels the mind. — From a parody of Time magazine

• “If’t be so, For Banquo’s issue have I fil’d my mind,/ For them the gracious Duncan have I murder’d—Shakespeare Macbeth

Inversion

• What I am trying to say – and I do not think this an unfair comment – is that we were a much more idealistic generation. — The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Parenthesis

• Mrs. Zadlock, the AP Language and Composition teacher, gave students a long list of schemes and tropes.

Apposition

• And he to England shall along with you — Shakespeare Hamlet, III, iii, 4

• I ate seven donuts, my competition, four. 

Ellipsis

• Veni, Vidi, Veci (I came, I saw, I conquered.)— Julius Caesar

Asyndeton

• I said, "Who killed him?" and he said, "I don't know who killed him but he's dead all right," and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights and windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Key and she was all right only she was full of water.
  —Ernest Hemingway "After the Storm."

Polysyndeton

• “What the hammer? what the chain?

  In what furnace was thy brain?

  What the anvil? what dread grasp

  Dare its deadly terrors clasp?”

  —William Blake “The Tyger”

Anaphora

• “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The government is of the people, by the people and for the people.—Abraham Lincoln  Gettysburg Address

Epistrophe

• Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answered blows:

  Strength match’ with strength, and power confronted power.

  Shakespeare, King John, II, I, 329-30)

• "To each the boulders that have fallen to each." —Robert Frost "Mending Wall"

Epanalepsis

• The love of wicked men converts to fear,
  That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
  To worthy danger and deserved death.
  —Shakespeare, Richard II 5.1.66-68

Anadiplosis

•   By day the frolic, and the dance by night. —Samuel Johnson “The Vanity of Human Wishes”

  Adam, first of men,/ To first of women, Eve—Milton Paradise Lost

Chiasmus

• When the going gets tough, the tough get going. 

• “Fair is foul, and foul is fair…”—Shakespeare Macbeth, I, i

Antimetabole

No man is an island —John Donne

Metaphor

My love is like a red, red rose —Robert Burns

Simile

All hands on deck.

Synecdoche

• The pen is mightier than the sword.

• Crown for royalty

Metonymy

What is the difference between a conductor and a teacher? The conductor minds the train and a teacher trains the mind.

Pun

• She took his heart and wallet.

• “Harriet had broken all her old ties and half the commandments”— Dorothy Sayers

Zeugma

O beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
—Iago in Shakespeare's Othello 3.3.165-67

Personification

“With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!” —Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet 31

Apostrophe

I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.

Hyperbole

• It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain. —Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

• A geologist says, “ I know a thing or two about rocks.”

Understatement

• "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

  Shakespeare Sonnet 18

• How do I love thee?

  Browning Sonnet 43

Rhetorical Question

The buzzing of innumerable bees

Onomatopoeia

Art is a form of lying to tell the truth (Pablo Picasso)

Paradox

• Yet from those flames

  No light, but rather darkness visible

  Served only to discover sights of woe.

  —Milton, Paradise Lost 1.62-64

• The Sounds of Silence

Oxymoron