Literary Devices

Literary devices are the tools a poet uses to turn a subject into a feeling. This lesson explains the devices that matter most for “Ravens”, namely imagery and symbol, comparisons, sound patterns and free verse, using our own practice sentences about ravens, and shows how to name a device and explain its effect.

Your course overview singles out two devices in “Ravens”: vivid imagery and the raven as a symbol. Around them sit the usual tools of Hughes's style: comparisons such as simile, metaphor and personification, sound devices such as alliteration and assonance, and the shaping of free verse through line breaks, enjambment and pauses. The lesson defines each device, gives an original example about ravens, tells you what to look for in your own copy of the poem and shows how to write a device-evidence-effect sentence that earns marks.

Why devices matter. A device is a technique. It matters only because of what it does: it makes an image sharper, a mood heavier, a rhythm slower or an idea larger. In an examination you are never rewarded for merely naming a device. You are rewarded for saying what it does. Because “Ravens” is under copyright, every example below is our own practice sentence about ravens, not a line from the poem. Use them to learn the tool, then find the real examples in your own copy.

1. Imagery. Imagery is language that makes the reader see, hear, touch, smell or taste. Your course overview describes the poem's imagery as vivid, so this is the first device to examine. Practice sentence: black wings slapped against a white sky, and the croak cracked the frozen air. That sentence offers sight (black against white), sound (the croak) and touch (frozen). When you analyse the poem's imagery, name the sense involved and say what mood it creates, such as cold, hardness or unease.

2. Symbolism. A symbol is something concrete that stands for a larger idea. The raven is the poem's main symbol: an omen of death and foreboding in folklore, the bird of Odin in Norse myth. Practice sentence: a single raven on the gatepost told the whole valley that someone would not see spring. Here the bird is more than a bird; it announces death. In an answer, say what the symbol stands for and how the poem keeps it real as a bird at the same time.

3. Comparison: simile, metaphor, personification. Hughes often makes the unfamiliar physical by comparing it with something solid.

• Simile: a comparison using like or as. Practice sentence: the raven's croak was as dry as a snapped twig.
• Metaphor: a comparison that says one thing is another. Practice sentence: the raven was a scrap of night left behind by the dawn.
• Personification: giving human qualities to non-human things. Practice sentence: the hill held its breath as the ravens came. Look for such comparisons in your copy. If the comparison uses like or as, call it a simile; if it simply says one thing is another, a metaphor; if it gives a bird, hill or wind human behaviour, personification.

4. Sound devices. Hughes's poems are known for muscular, physical sound.

• Alliteration: repetition of a consonant sound at the start of nearby words. Practice sentence: dark wings drove down the dead white slope.
• Assonance: repetition of a vowel sound inside nearby words. Practice sentence: the cold stone moaned as the crow flew over.
• Onomatopoeia: a word that sounds like what it names. Practice words: croak, flap, thud. Hard consonants such as b, k, t and d often give a harsh, percussive effect; soft ones such as s, l and m often give a hushed, slow effect. Always link the sound to the meaning.

5. Free verse, line breaks and pauses. The poems of Moortown Diary are written in free verse, which means no fixed rhyme scheme and no regular metre. Confirm this in your copy, and then write about what replaces them: the length of the lines, where each line ends, how sentences run across line breaks and how pauses fall.

• Enjambment: a sentence that runs on past the end of a line without a pause. Practice example, with a slash for the line break: the raven watched the field, and waited, then / dropped without a sound onto the grass.
• Caesura: a pause inside a line, usually made by punctuation. Practice sentence: wings folded. Eyes open. Waiting. Enjambment gives speed and a sense of something unstoppable; caesura gives stillness and tension.

6. Contrast and diction. Contrast places opposites side by side: black wings against white snow, the stillness of watching against the suddenness of action. Diction means the poet's choice of words. Hughes favours plain, concrete, physical words over decorative ones, and this suits an observing voice that records rather than preaches. Plain diction makes the poem feel honest and unsentimental.

How to write about a device. Use Device, Evidence, Effect. Name the device; give a few words from the poem with the stanza number, chosen from your own copy; explain the effect on meaning, mood or sound. A template: the poet uses [device] in [stanza number], [a few words], which creates [effect] and supports [theme or mood].

Mistakes to avoid.

• Naming a device without any effect.
• Calling every comparison a metaphor, or every repeated sound alliteration.
• Using a device list as a substitute for argument.
• Quoting a whole line when a few words will do.