RRhetoric
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Balance & Opposition

Parallelism

PAIR-uh-lel-iz-um / ˈpærəlɛlɪzəm

Putting matching ideas in matching grammatical form — phrases with phrases, clauses with clauses. The repeated structure says the items belong to one set and invites comparison. Break the pattern and the odd item stands out.

"…conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition…" — Lincoln

Don't confuse it with Antithesis, Isocolon. Isocolon adds equal length and rhythm; antithesis is parallelism put in service of contrast.

Drill this device — 41 excerpts

In the Reader — 41 excerpts

You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (translated by Gregory Hays) · open the passage →
Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet · open the passage →
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not …
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice · open the passage →
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice · open the passage →
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
— William Shakespeare, King Lear · open the passage →
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
— John Milton, Paradise Lost · open the passage →
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— Thomas Jefferson (Committee of Five), Declaration of Independence · open the passage →
an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay before me.
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus · open the passage →
My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights · open the passage →
I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it …
— Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government · open the passage →
A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter · open the passage →
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass · open the passage →
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass · open the passage →
She had read Paul and Virginia, and she had dreamed of the little bamboo house, the negro Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who …
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary · open the passage →
…creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved...books like this cannot be useless.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables · open the passage →
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
— Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address · open the passage →
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
— Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address · open the passage →
I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground · open the passage →
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.
— Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address · open the passage →
Phileas Fogg was one of those mathematically exact people, who, never hurried and always ready, are economical of their steps and their motions.
— Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days · open the passage →
Phileas Fogg was one of those mathematically exact people, who, never hurried and always ready, are economical of their steps and their motions.
— Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days · open the passage →
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (translated by Constance Garnett) · open the passage →
I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them.
— Henrik Ibsen, Et dukkehjem (A Doll's House) · open the passage →
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
— Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island · open the passage →

…and 17 more. Meet the rest in the quiz →

Travels with

Devices that share a passage with parallelism most often — company reveals character.

Anaphora 20 Antithesis 16 Passive Voice 13 Metaphor 13 Personification 10 Polysyndeton 9 Asyndeton 8 Hyperbole 8

The rest of the family

Antithesis Isocolon Chiasmus Antimetabole Juxtaposition Oxymoron Paradox