Figurative Language in To Kill a Mockingbird

1
Figurative Language in To Kill a Mockingbird

• Simile, Metaphor, and Personification are
  considered Figurative Language literary devices
  because they help paint pictures (figures) in
  your mind as you read. Imagery, which uses your
  senses to paint pictures, is also figurative
  language.

2
Personification

• A figure of speech in which an inanimate object
  or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or
  abilities.
•  The act of personifying.

3
Personifying words

• Mr. Radleys older son lived in Pensacola he
  came home at Christmas, and he was one of the few
  people we ever saw enter or leave the place. From
  the day Mr. Radley took Arthur home, people say
  the house died (Lee 14).

4
What are the personifying words?

• The house was the same, droopy and sick, but as
  we stared down the street we thought we saw an
  inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost
  invisible movement and the house was still (Lee
  19).

5
Personifying words?

• There he was, returning to me. His white shirt
  bobbed over the back fence and slowly grew
  larger. He came up the back steps, latched the
  door behind him, and sat on his cot (Lee 55).

6
???

• "At the door, we saw fire spewing from Miss
  Maudie's diningroom windows.  As if to confirm
  what we saw, the town siren wailed up the scale
  of a treble pitch and remained there, screaming."

7
Metaphor

• A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that
  ordinarily designates one thing is used to
  designate another, thus making an implicit
  comparison.
• In a sea of troubles, the amount of troubles is
  compared to a sea.
• "All the world's a stage" (Shakespeare) compares
  the world to a stage.

8
Metaphor

• Then I heard Atticus cough. I held my breath.
  Sometimes when we made a midnight pilgrimage to
  the bathroom we would find him reading (Lee 57).
• Compares their trip to the bathroom with a
  pilgrimage.

9
What is the metaphor?

• I had never thought about it, but summer was
  Dill by the fish pool smoking string, Dills eyes
  alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley
  emerge summer was the swiftness with which Dill
  would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not
  looking(Lee 116).

10
What is the metaphor?

• I knew when there was trouble in our street.
  Soft taffeta-like sounds and muffled scurrying
  sounds filled me with helpless dread (Lee 69).

11
Simile

• A figure of speech in which two fundamentally
  unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in
  a phrase introduced by "like" or "as."

12
Simile

• The Radley place fascinated Dill. In spite of
  our warnings it drew him as the moon draws
  water (Lee 8).
• The moon draws water (an idiom!) means the moon
  attracts water (gravity).
• Dill was intrigued by and attracted to the Radley
  place as though gravity was pulling him.

13
Whats the simile?

• Ladies bathed before noon, after their
  three-oclock naps, and by nightfall were like
  soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet
  talcum (Lee 6).

Whats being compared?
14
Whats the simile? Whats being compared?

• It must have been two oclock. The moon was
  setting and the lattice-work shadows were fading
  into fuzzy nothingness. Jems white shirt-tail
  dipped and bobbed like a small ghost dancing away
  to escape the coming morning (Lee 57).

15
What type of literary device is used here?

• Auntie said I should be a ray of sunshine in
  my fathers lonely life. I suggested that one
  could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well,
  but Aunty said that one had to behave like a
  sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown
  progressively worse every year (Lee 81).

16
What did she use here?

• "some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just
  above my eye level, winking at me in the
  afternoon sun."

17
What did she use here?

• the fruits of their industry (those that were
  not eaten) made the plot of ground around the
  cabin look like the playhouse of an insane
  child (Lee 170).

18
What did she use here?

• The house was the same, droopy and sick, but as
  we stared down the street we thought we saw an
  inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost
  invisible movement and the house was still (Lee
  15).

19
What did she use here?

• the business part of the meeting was
  blood-curdling, the social hour was drearyShe
  said no more. When Miss Maudie was angry her
  brevity was icy. Something had made her deeply
  angry, and her gray eyes were as cold as her
  voice (Lee 233).

20
Create your own!

• You will take five word cards from the box.
• Once you have these, you can arrange and
  rearrange them in any order you want to.
• You will fill in the words that go between the
  cards.
• Create at least one metaphor, one simile and one
  example of personification. You may use all, or
  some of the words. The more you use, the more
  interesting it will be.
• Write them down.

21
Example
Secret
Tiger
Frown
Thunder
Games
The tiger secretly frowned as the games
thundered on.