Elements: The essential parts of a piece of literature

• Theme: The main idea and what the story is trying to teach

• Plot: What happens in the story

• Conflict: Struggle or clash between opposing forces or characters

• Setting: Where the story takes place

• Characters: People in a story, poem, or play

• Point of View: The narrative view of the story

Devices: Techniques used for stylistic purposes

• Figurative Language expresses ideas through figures of speech in a non-literal way.
  • simile: comparison between two things using "like" or "as" (the stars shone like diamonds)
  • metaphor: direct comparison where one thing is said to be another thing (the stars were diamonds)
  • personification: when a nonhuman is given human characteristics (the wind whispered)
  • symbolism: the technique of using an image, person, place or thing to express the idea of something else (roses symbolize love)

• Allusion: brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature

• Detail: a specific piece of literary work that makes up or adds to a larger picture or story

• Flashback: a break in a story’s action that returns the reader to a previous event

• Foreshadowing: the use of clues giving the reader hints of events to come

• Repetition: the technique of repeating a word, phrase, or idea for emphasis and effect

• Alliteration: repetition of the first sound--usually a consonant--in several words or a sentence or line of poetry (a beautiful bumble bee)

• Onomatopoeia: words that sound like what they mean (buzz, ouch, splash)

• Dialect: a social or regional variety of a particular language