Literary Devices In The Hound Of The Baskerville

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Literary Devices Essay

Literary devices help the reader “live” the text. They bring the reader into the story. It also gives a really good impact on the story because it makes the story much more interesting and the author can make the reader “feel” what he wants them to feel. Some literary devices used by authors are: setting, mood, imagery, conflict and personification.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one successful author that uses setting and mood in his stories to bring the reader into the mystery. The story “The Hound of the Baskerville” is a good example of how Doyle uses those two literary devices to enhance the reader’s experience. In the story, everything is set up around a mystery. It is not a funny story or anything like that; when you start reading it there is action and curiosity. You want to know what is going to happen who is going to die, live or even who is going to be a murderer! Arthur Conan Doyle uses the setting to set up the mood. Doyle wrote the hound of the Baskerville after the Boer War in South Africa in 1901. It is a story that has dark scenes with a lot of fog. We can feel the mood of the story just with one sentence “Hindered by a thick fog and sheer fright, Holmes and Watson nonetheless shoot the beast and solve the mystery.” Doyle brings the reader into the scenery with this quote: “Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream.” It helps the reader feel the mystery that is unfolding.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery is another author who uses literary devices to enhance the readers’ understanding of the story. He wrote “The Little Prince...

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... The people of the village would build their houses differently after having seen the most handsome drowned man in the world. They would make them bigger and stronger. Finding a drowned man even affected the villagers to the point that they gave him a name (Esteban) and named the village after him. They would say, “That’s Esteban’s village.”

Literary devices are important tools that an author can use to enhance his story. It brings the reader to feel, see and learn what needs to be. It is really important to have at least one literary device to make a story have a sense. Conflict, imagery, setting, mood, and personification are all used in these stories; this is one of the reasons why they are that successful. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez all use at least one literary device; this is what makes them good writers.

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