Saturday, November 12, 2011

In Hamlet, what literary devices can you identify in the following passage? Please help me find metaphors, synecdoche, images, similes. It is...

a) Metaphors are comparisons that do not use the word
"like" or "as."  Some examples:


"O, what a rogue and
peasant slave am I."  Hamlet is not really a slave; in fact, he is a prince.  He means
to say that he is acting like a peasant slave who lacks
courage. 


 "Why, what an ass am I!"  Hamlet is not really a
donkey.  He means to say that he is acting foolishly, like a
donkey.


b) Images.  The two metaphors above can also be
considered examples of imagery; they cause us to picture slaves and jackasses in our
minds.  Other images are:


"drown the stage with
tears";


"I should have fatted all the region kites/With
this slave's offal" (I should have fed all the hunting birds in the
region
With my body’s decaying flesh);


c) Similes
are comparisons that use the word "like" or "as."  Some
examples:


"Yet I...peak like a John-a-dreams" (shrink from
my task of revenging my father's murder like a dreamy
fellow);


"I...must...fall down cursing like a very drab, /
Menial servant in the kitchen."


d) A synechdoche is a
figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole (abc for alphabet) or
the whole represents a part (Boston won the World Series).  The term is also used for
other substitutions, such as the object contained for the container ("I was injured by
some pickles" rather than "I was injured by a can of pickles), and the action instead of
the actor.


This passage contains an example of the last
type of synechdoche:


readability="7">

Because murder, although it is silent, will
speak
With its own most miraculous
organ.



Hamlet does not mean
that "murder" can speak.  Rather he means that the person who committed the murder,
Claudius, can be made to speak by having him witness a play that is "something like the
murder" of Hamlet's father.

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