Chiasmus from Top AP English Exam Novels

Chiasmus is a structure using inverted word order in two parallel phrases; it is often used in the thematic context of balance, symmetry, or reflection.
Here are links to our lists for AP English literary terms: Chiasmus, Litotes, Metaphor, Simile, Zeugma
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. forget
    be unable to remember
    "You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget."
    --The Road, Cormac McCarthy
  2. remember
    keep in mind for attention or consideration
    “Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget."
    --Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
  3. bow
    bend the head or upper part of body in a gesture of respect
    “They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.”
    --Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
  4. sacrilegious
    grossly irreverent toward what is considered holy
    'Anything worth living for,' said Nately, 'is worth dying for.'
    And anything worth dying for,' answered the sacrilegious old man, 'is certainly worth living for.”
    --Catch 22, Joseph Heller
  5. truth
    a factual statement
    “The truth is the light and the light is the truth.”
    --Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
  6. repel
    fill with distaste
    "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life”
    --The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
    This is a chiasmus because the order of adjectives is reversed in the second clause--that is, "without", outwardly, the character is "enchanted," whereas "within" he is "repelled". They are in reverse order instead of a simple one-to-one correspondence.
  7. frown
    a facial expression of dislike or displeasure
    "...with a smile that was like a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile”
    --Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
  8. descent
    a movement downward
    "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 Dead," James Joyce
  9. incredible
    amazing; extraordinarily good or great
    “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness.”
    --The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
  10. suffer
    experience emotional pain
    "I suffer for you...I mean...you suffer for me"
    --The Assistant, Bernard Malamud
  11. corrupt
    debase morally
    “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
    --1984, George Orwell
  12. conscious
    having awareness of surroundings and sensations and thoughts
    “Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
    --1984, George Orwell
  13. foul
    highly offensive; arousing aversion or disgust
    "Fair is foul and foul is fair"
    --Macbeth, William Shakespeare
Created on Wed Sep 25 10:45:01 EDT 2013 (updated Wed Oct 09 15:11:50 EDT 2013)

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