Literary Terms Makeup

Symbol
"I drank the coffee, and then I wanted a cigarette. But I wasn’t sure if I should smoke, under the circumstances—in Mother’s presence. I thought it over; really, it didn’t seem to matter, so I offered the keeper a cigarette, and we both smoked." (Camus 7)

Cigarettes in The Stranger are present throughout the entire novel, although Meursault's attitude towards them changes after a stay in prison. Cigarettes represent the freedom Meursault once had and delighted in.

Caricature
"Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face, with a
great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard — a clever face, and
yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin
nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the
face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality" (Orwell 6-7)

This quote takes place during the Two-Minutes Hate where Goldstein is present on the screen. Although compared to a sheep in this quote, the image and sound of his voice changes into a literal sheep near the climax of the event. This exaggeration of Goldstein's features was used by Orwell to reveal that manipulative techniques used by the Party to control its subjects.

Oxymoron
"WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" (Orwell 2)

This is the Party slogan. War is the polar opposite of peace and one cannot be a free slave. Ignorance being strength is questionable however.

Repetition
"That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power." (Orwell 155)

This is O'Brien's response to Winston concerning the Party's constant accumulation of power. The repetition of victory, triumph and pressing parallels the torture methods used by the Ministry of Love. Constantly repeating something over and over to make a point or force it.

Juxtaposition
“Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.” (Hurston 25)

Do I really need to go into this? I covered it in my IOP... Ah well, here we go. This line happened soon after Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks. Earlier in the book, it was said that the dream was the source of life for women. Janie's dream died, and so she as a person died. But came back to life when "she became a woman.", coming of age sort of connotation. Life and death are being compared here.

Hyperbole
"He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He was
still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor, through the walls
of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere,
into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars — always away, away, away
from the rats." (Orwell 166)

This is in the last few moments Winston spends in the Ministry of Love, where he avoids having hungry rats eat his face by begging for the punishment to be sent to Julia. The exaggeration was meant to emphasis the overwhelming sense of relief Winston felt.

Personification
"The wondrous peace of that sleeping summer flowed through me like a tide." (Camus 122)

This is one of the last lines in The Stranger, after Meursault's outburst directed towards the chaplain. A few aspects of Meursault's life can be linked to this quote. He is very soon about to enter an eternal sleep, also known as death, and feeling peaceful is something he often experienced while swimming in the ocean.

Parallel Structure
"He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom
of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he
was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed" (Orwell 7)

This was a description of the video played at the Two Minutes hate. An absolutely huge sentence that has a pattern of 'he was's.

Assonance
"I had a hard time waking up on Sunday, and Marie had to call me and shake me." (Camus 47)

This sentence is using assonance of the letter 'a' to make waking up seem so harsh and to the point. Also, the 'call me and shake me' rolls of the tongue well, and I imagine that line being said with a little bit of a 'whiny' tone.

Motif
"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" (Orwell 1)

This line pops up all over the place, and Big Brother is referenced all over the book. In fact, he is quite central to the Party in the fact that he represents the entire Party and all the love of the people is directed at him and therefore the Party as well.

Chronology
"Maman died today." (Camus 1)

The very first sentence in The Stranger. The Stranger follows a very linear progression of events, but this is the event that set all the rest in motion.

Structure
"Despite my willingness to understand, I just couldn't accept such arrogant certainty. Because, after all, there really was something ridiculously out of proportion between the verdict such certainty was based on and the imperturbable march of events from the moment the verdict was announced." (Camus 109)

This was spoken by Meursault on the topic of the chaplain. Throughout the entire book, there are many short sentences that precede long ones, or sometimes even the other way around. One serves to summarize an idea or conclude it, and the other serves to describe said idea or present it in a detailed form.

Ambiguity
"The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started." (Camus 59)

This line is talking about how Meursault shot the Arab. The ambiguity comes in the fact that Meursault never reveals why he murdered the Arab.