Literary Devices
Richard Wright employs many literary devices in the text, among which are discussed below:
Simile
A simile is a device that states that one thing is like another one because they share similar features. ‘Like’ or ‘as… as’ are used to express simile. There are so many similes in Wright’s Native Son e.g. ‘… she was staring with blank eyes like a blind woman…’ (page 211). ‘…drumming like a hammer in his brain… and screams coming to him like the roar of water’ (page 301). ‘…his eyes like two still pools of black ink…’ (page303) ‘…fell away as a fallow field …’ (page 165).
Metaphor
This is a way of comparing two things that have similar features without making use of ‘like or as’.The word ‘like’ is not there. ‘… after he had been tossed to dry upon warm sunlit rock under a white sky …’ (page 165). ‘… Spinning straight down into that ocean of boiling hate’ (page 296).
Allusion
Allusion is the indirect reference in a work of literature which recalls a figure in the past, a place or historical event in another literary work or a passage in the bible.
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