This document defines and provides examples of several types of figurative language: simile, personification, metaphor, anaphora, allusion, and alliteration. Simile uses like or as to compare two unlike things. Personification gives human traits to non-living things. Metaphor directly states one thing is another. Anaphora repeats words at the beginning of lines for emphasis. Allusion indirectly references history or literature. Alliteration repeats initial consonant sounds.

1. Figurative Language

2. simile A literary device that compares one thing to another using “like” or “as” Examples: “The girls were like two peas in a pod.” “Don’t treat me like a puppet on a string.” “His temper was as explosive as a volcano.”

3. personification Def.: a literary device where the writer gives human characteristics to non-living things. “While my Guitar Gently Weeps.” “The sky looked angry, with huge black clouds and jagged lightning.” “The car choked and sputtered, spewing smoke, dying a slow death in the middle of the busy highway.”

4. metaphor A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things in which one thing is said to be another thing or called by the name of another thing. Example from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”: “My love is a blinding, burning flame. The sun, a demon’s eye. Soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun.”

5. anaphora A literary device where the writer repeats a sequence of words at the beginnings of lines, thereby lending them emphasis. "What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country whether they be white or whether they be black." Robert F. Kennedy, Announcing the death of Martin Luther King

6. allusion A literary device by which the writer refers indirectly to an historical event or literary work. "I was not born in a manger.” “Christy didn't like to spend money. She was no Scrooge, but she seldom purchased anything except the bare necessities.”

7. alliteration(also called “consonance”) Repetition of initial (first) consonant sound of two or more words. Examples: “"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)