"Must Know" Terms for ENG1DI

  1. Fiction: Fiction is a story in which most, if not all, of the material is created in the imagination of the writer. Some fiction has aspects/details which come from real life, but the story created with them is made-up. For example, historical fiction uses the setting of a particular historical time-frame and creates a story which the writer thinks might have happened in that place at that time. Novels, unless they are memoirs, are fiction.
  1. Non-fiction: Non-fiction is writing which is collected from current events, observations, personal experience, research or historical documentation. Examples of this kind of writing are: biographies, autobiographies/memoirs, cookbooks, travel writing, news, editorials, "how-to" books, and all kinds of informational texts.
  1. Imagery: Imagery is an umbrella term for a set of tools that writer's use to add depth and layers of understanding for their readers. Imagery, as its name suggests, is designed to create pictures, or images, in the mind of the reader. This can be done by appealing to the senses of smell, touch, taste, sound and sight. Each of these devices are considered types of imagery: simile, metaphor, personification, allusion, vivification (giving life to inanimate objects).
  1. Metaphor: this is a direct comparison of one thing to another thing to add meaning to the reader's understanding of the first thing. It does not use "like" or "as". Example: My brother is a pig.
  1. Simile: a direct comparison of one thing to another thing to add meaning to the reader's understanding of the first thing. A simile always uses "like" or "as". Example: My brother eats like a pig. He is also as messy as a pig.
  1. Personification: The key to this term is the word "person" which is found within it. Giving human qualities to something which is not human is personification. Example: The gust of wind that blew in through the door was so cold that the room shivered.
  1. Allusion: This is when the author makes reference to some event, song, person, story or other piece of information that s/he could reasonably expect her/his reader to be familiar with. It is common for people who grew up in another country than the writer to NOT understand an allusion unless they are very familiar with the lexicon of that culture and place (lexicon means the total inventory of morphemes in a given language). Example: The main character in this story is a classic Romeo; he falls madly in love, acts irrationally in rage and in desire, finally ending up dead as does his lover.
  1. Protagonist: The protagonist of the story is the person around whom the story revolves. This person is the one who has to overcome something in the story - s/he is chasing some sort of dream/goal. Sometimes, in a longer work like a novel, there may be more than one protagonist. In a short story, there will only be one, and you can figure it out by looking at the first two pages of the story - the protagonist is introduced here as is her/his conflict or goal. Sometimes the story is told from the protagonist's perspective.
  1. Antagonist: The antagonist in a story is the person who stands between the protagonist and her/his goal. Sometimes the antagonist is bad or evil, but this is not always the case. Sometimes, the antagonist just wants something different for the protagonist than the protagonist wants for her/himself. Think of it this way: if a young woman who wants to be a police officer is your protagonist, then the antagonists could be her parents who do not want their daughter to take on such a dangerous job.
  1. Narrators: narrators come in different types. Here are a few that you should know:
    First person: the story is told through the eyes and experience of one person. We only see and know what this person sees and discovers. If the story is told "retrospectively" then the narrator is an older person telling the story by looking back into her/his past. This allows the narrator to use "hindsight" - to make judgements about the choices s/he made in the past. It also allows the narrator to use foreshadowing - hinting at events to come - and flashbacks - times when the narrator dips into her/his memory to make connections to the past for the reader.
    Third person: There are two main ways to tell stories from a third person perspective - limited: when the narrator or story writer limits the details revealed to the reader. Sometimes, this narrator might even be biased about a person or event which s/he is telling the reader about. Omniscient narrators know all there is to know about the world they are speaking about. They can dip into anyone's mind/experience, and can jump around in time and space. This narrative style can also be biased.
  1. Conflicts: Conflicts come in three types:
    Person against person - this can be one person fighting against another (for any reason), one person hunting another (detective stories), a person against a larger group, or a person who is a part of a larger group fighting one person or a group of people.
    Person against external force: this force can come in many forms, from a natural disaster like an earthquake or tornado to a person fighting against an law or rule that s/he thinks is unfair.
    Person against self: this kind of conflict involves a character battling within her/himself over something. It could be that this person has to make a difficult decision (like Catherine has to decide whether to marry Newt or Henry) or that the person has to dig deep into him/herself to find the strength to achieve a goal, like climbing a mountain or getting into a university.
  1. Rising action, climax, falling action: Rising action is made up of the key details in any story that are key to the story-line. You should be able to identify which these are, and explain why each is necessary to the plot of the story. The climax occurs when the action is the highest - it is a turning point in the story, and allows us to see if the protagonist did or did not achieve his/her goal. Falling action/dénouement allows the writer to tie up loose ends and finish the story. Sometimes, short stories do not have a denouement and end at the climax of the story.
  1. Symbolism: sometimes an author takes an object and makes it represent something else - this is symbolism. For example, a married couple might exchange rings to symbolise their commitment to one another. The ring is a never ending circle, which represents that they commit to loving each other forever. The ring is made of precious metal - and the couple consider each other precious. In the same way, a flower might represent someone's love, or a house might represent a relationship which has gone from bright, new and perfectly maintained to old, worn and falling apart.