Literary Elements

1
Literary Elements

• Setting, Theme, Plot, Point of View

2
I. Setting

• A. The time and place of a story, poem, or play.
• B. The setting can help create mood or
  atmosphere.
• C. The setting can also affect the events of the
  plot.

3
Setting

• D. In some stories, the conflict is provided by
  the setting. This happens in The Dog of
  Pompeii when the characters lives are
  threatened by a volcano.

4
II. Theme

• A. The truth about life revealed in a work of
  literature. It is a lesson or moral that the
  author wants to teach you through the plot of the
  story.
• B. A theme is not the same as a subject. A
  subject can usually be expressed in a word or
  two.
• C. A theme is the idea the author wished to
  reveal about that subject.

5
Theme

• D. A theme has to be expressed in a full
  sentence.
• E. A work can have more than one theme.
• F. A theme is not usually stated directly in the
  work. Instead the reader has to think about the
  elements of the work and then make an inference
  about what they all mean.

6
Theme

• Think about the story Charlottes Web.
• What theme or themes do you think the author is
  trying to get across to the reader?

7
III.Plot

• A. The series of related events that make up a
  story.
• B. Plot tells what happens in a short story,
  novel, play, or narrative poem.

8
Plot

• C. Most plots are built around the following
  elements
• Introduction Exposition Rising Action
• Complications arise as the characters take steps
  to resolve the conflict
• 3. Climax- gives a hint of how the problem will
  be solved
• 4. Falling Action- the part of the story that
  follows the climax.
• 5. Resolution- problems are resolved

9
IV. Point of View

• A. The vantage point from which the a story is
  told.
• B. There are two common points of view
• 1. 1st Person POV one of the characters from
  the story is telling the story. Uses the pronoun
  I. All information about the story must come
  from this one narrator.
• 2. 3rd Person POV the narrator is NOT a
  character in the story.

10
V. Characters

• A. Believable personalities in a story
• B. They do NOT have to be people or
• animals.

11
VI. Conflict

• A. Conflicts are problems that occur in the
  story.

12
External vs. Internal

• External
• External Conflict takes place outside of the body

• Internal
• Internal Conflict takes place inside of the
  body/mind

13
Five Types of Conflict
4. Person vs. technology (external)