Balance & Opposition
Chiasmus
A two-part structure where the second half reverses the order of the first: A-B, then B-A. The crossing shape makes the sentence feel complete and closed. With the exact same words reversed, it is antimetabole.
"Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." — JFK
Don't confuse it with Antimetabole. Antimetabole reverses the *same words*; chiasmus may invert grammar or concepts without exact lexical repetition.
In the Reader — 13 excerpts
Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me –
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them.
'Tis better to have loved and lost
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them.
I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
The sun lay on the grass and warmed it, and in the shade under the grass the insects
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever …
He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon …
the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims.
Travels with
Devices that share a passage with chiasmus most often — company reveals character.
Anaphora 14 Polysyndeton 9 Antithesis 7 Metaphor 7 Synecdoche 5 Parataxis 5 Passive Voice 5 Parallelism 5
The rest of the family
Antithesis Parallelism Isocolon Antimetabole Juxtaposition Oxymoron Paradox