"Motif
This term has a number of definitions, but as I'll be using it here, it means
an element that repeats throughout the story, and in so doing carries
additional significance beyond its literal meaning. Motifs can take different forms:
- images (a tree that the character sees repeatedly, perhaps in different seasons, conveying ideas about growth, death, rebirth),
- words or phrases (something a character or the narrator repeats, with different connotations at different times),
- places (the character keeps coming back to a certain place, or remembering the place)
- events (an exam that several characters have to take at different points in the story)
- ideas (the narrator keeps referring to, say, the idea of reincarnation)"
Source:
http://www.shoreline.edu/doldham/202/html/formal.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment