Balance & Opposition
Juxtaposition
Two things placed side by side with no stated connection, letting the pairing make the meaning. The writer supplies the closeness; the reader supplies the relation.
"The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough." — Pound
Don't confuse it with Antithesis. Antithesis states its contrast in balanced grammar; juxtaposition just sets the two things down and walks away.
In the Reader — 5 excerpts
He was there, asleep on the bare floor.
—Those dying generations—at their song
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: his boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else.
Travels with
Devices that share a passage with juxtaposition most often — company reveals character.
The rest of the family
Antithesis Parallelism Isocolon Chiasmus Antimetabole Oxymoron Paradox