Literary Terms

A protagonist is the main character of a piece of work. They usually have an antagonist, which is just someone that stands in their way of achieving whatever goal they have.




Protagonists are easily identified, given that the entire work revolves around them and their journey. When I think of protagonists I usually think of super heroes, in comics and movies they're the protagonists and they all have an enemy.





Surrealism is a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind. It is characterized by the juxtaposition of the bizarre and the banal, as seen in the photographs in the video below.






Prose is the ordinary form of spoken and written language; language that does not have a regular rhyme pattern.


In the following poem there is a clear rhyming sequence, followed by what it would sound like had it been in prose:


The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."


I was in the woods during the fall season and I came upon two roads. The first was visibly the one preferred by most, the second seemed as though it had been untouched. I would have liked to have travelled down them both but I chose the latter instead and I am glad I did because it indeed was a better choice.