Museum Indiansby Susan Power

Autobiography(Auto=self, bio=life, graph=written)

Memoir

•True=Non-Fiction•First-Person point-of-view

•Focuses on a specific event or time period in the author’s life, and includes the author’s feelings about those events •Memories that are important to the author’s life, or unusual

Reading a memoir is a lot like reading someone’s diary—filled not just with what happened, but also describing how the person felt about what happened.

Literary DevicesTechniques an author uses to convey his or her message

Figurative LanguageAllusionImageryRepetitionSymbols

Types of Figurative Language

SimileA comparison using the words “like” or “as”

MetaphorA direct comparison that does NOT use the words “like” or “as”

Extended Metaphor

An extended metaphor is a comparison that is continued in a piece of literature for more than a single reference. It might be contained in a few sentences, a paragraph, stanza, or an entire literary piece. An author uses an extended metaphor to build a larger comparison between two things.

“Bobby Holloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus. Currently I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cart wheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.”(Dean Koontz, Seize the Night. Bantam, 1999)

Example

AllusionAn allusion is a figure of speech that refers to past literature, history, or culture.

RepetitionRepeating a word or phrase to emphasize it!

“I Have a Dream” speech“I have a dream…”“With this faith…”“Let freedom ring..”“Free at last…”

SymbolSomething that stands for, or represents, something beyond itself

Vocabulary•chide—to scold or criticize•despondent—loss of hope/confidence•expiration—act of breathing out•nominal—small, insignificant•recap—retell, summarize•resonate—have an effect or impact on•requisite—needed or necessary•repatriate—return someone to their birth country