Address & Argument
Apostrophe
Turning from the real audience to address someone absent, dead, or something non-human: 'O wild West Wind.' The turn dramatizes feeling too big for the room, and makes the reader an overhearer.
"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
Don't confuse it with Invocation. Direct address speaks to the present audience ('Reader, I married him' sits between the two); invocation is apostrophe petitioning for aid.
In the Reader — 8 excerpts
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door—the lady, or the tiger?
Write, for example, 'The night is starry
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of
Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened. First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees.
Travels with
Devices that share a passage with apostrophe most often — company reveals character.
Antithesis 3 Parallelism 3 Rhetorical Question 3 Anaphora 3
The rest of the family
Rhetorical Question Invocation Aphorism Enthymeme Correctio / Epanorthosis Parrhesia Metabasis Amplificatio Aporia Enargeia / Vivid Specificity