APOSTROPHEAPOSTROPHENo, not that apostrophe

What’s in a Name?• The word apostrophe comes from the Greek for “turning back.” In cases such as Homer’s Odyssey, apostrophe usually occurs when the narrator intrudes in the storyline to provide information or commentary.

• This use of apostrophe—where a narrator interrupts the action to provide commentary—was also popular in works of literature in the nineteenth- to mid-twentieth centuries.

• The apostrophe definition as a literary device evolved to the turning from one addressee to another.

•Apostrophe used in literature is when the speaker addresses a non-existent person or an abstract idea in such a way as if it were present and capable of understanding feelings.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,How I wonder what you are.Up above the world so high,Like a diamond in the sky.”

Function of Apostrophe

• Writers try to bring abstract ideas or non-existent people to life so that the nature of emotions they want to communicate gets across in a better way – because it is more convenient for the readers to relate themselves to the abstract emotions when they observe them in their natural surroundings. In addition, the use of apostrophe motivates the readers to develop a perspective that is fresh as well as creative.

Examples

“Is this a dagger which I see before me,The handle toward my hand?

Come, let me clutch thee!I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.”

•In his conflict before murdering King Duncan, Macbeth has a strange vision of a dagger and talks to

it as if it were another person.

Apostrophe & Personification

“Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!”In The Taming of the Shrew, a character is not just addressing a deity or spirit, but a personification of an idea. In this apostrophe, the idea of death is personified and called out to by the character.

“Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes.”

Lady Macbeth is calling upon the night itself to come and conceal her actions. In this example, night itself is personified and addressed directly by Lady Macbeth.

“O God, God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the

uses of this world!”•Shakespeare uses apostrophe so his characters can address spiritual beings. The most common usage of apostrophe in many works of literature are evocations of deities, like God. Hamlet cries out to God, and just like in Macbeth, the character is calling out to an absent spiritual being.

“O happy dagger, this is thy sheath. There rust and let me die.”

Our previous examples had characters addressing spiritual beings or personifications, but sometimes a character can address an inanimate object. In the pivotal scene of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet speaks to the dagger itself. This type of apostrophe is very common in Shakespeare’s plays.

• “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?Deny thy father and refuse thy name.”

• “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou are

not so.”

•“Busy old fool, unruly sun, why dost thou thus, through windows, and through curtains call on

us?”

Your Turn• Step 1: Write you own example of an apostrophe. Address a spiritual being, an inanimate object, or personify an idea.

• Step 2: Trade papers with someone.

• Step 3: Respond to your peer’s writing as if you were that spiritual being, the inanimate object, or the idea they personified.