Juxtaposition

Etymology and Meanings of Literary Device Juxtaposition

Etymologically, the literary term, juxtaposition, has originated from the Latin term juxta which means close, near, or at hand. It entered the French vocabulary in 1660, which almost means the same thing that two things are close to each other, or one thing is beside the other, or one thing is near the other.

Definition of Literary Device Juxtaposition

In literature, juxtaposition means to put two ideas or literary or linguistic elements close to each other in the same sentence, showing their comparison and contrast, or for that matter their differences or similarities which are not explicit but implicit.

Common Examples of Juxtaposition

1. Do what you wish and don’t do what you hate.
2. Let us demonstrate bravery, but not demonstrate cowardness.
3. Do not make black white or white black. Let the color stay the same and see the same sameness.
4. It was the best of the times and it was the worst of the times. (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)
5. Let us not dispel our fear, but expel our cowardness.
6. Show your guts and remove the ruts.

Literary Examples of Juxtaposition

Example # 1

From Hamlet by William Shakespeare

And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition, and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though performed at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.

Hamlet speaks these lines in the first act of the play where he juxtaposes different ideas as shown as “honored in the breach than the observance.” It shows a comparison in the very next line about the east and west as well as “pith and marrow.” This shows how Hamlet differentiates different conventions in different cultures and compares them to his own culture.

Example # 2

From A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy

Elfride had as her own the thoughtfulness which appears in the face of the Madonna della Sedia, without its rapture: the warmth and spirit of the type of woman’s feature most common to the beauties––mortal and immortal––of Rubens, without their insistent fleshliness. The characteristic expression of the female faces of Correggio*––that of the yearning human thoughts that lie too deep for tears*––was hers sometimes, but seldom under ordinary
conditions.

This passage occurs in the novel of Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes. He presents the character of Elfride and her thoughtfulness as how it looks when compared to mortal and immortal, common and specific, and superficial and deep. The last one is rather implicit as the other two ideas are explicitly compared.

Example # 3

From A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Two women, one white and one colored, are taking the air on the steps of the building. The white woman is Eunice, who occupies the upstairs flat; the colored woman a neighbor, for New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town.

This setting in the first scene of the play by Tennessee Williams shows how the author has beautifully compared two ladies with two different cultures putting the ideas in juxtaposition so that the readers fully understand his purpose. This juxtaposition intensifies the understanding of the audience.

Example # 4

From A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

I don’t enjoy it,” I said. He shook his head and looked out of the window.
“You do not mind it. You do not see it. You must forgive me. I know you are
wounded.”
“That is an accident.”
“Still even wounded you do not see it. I can tell. I do not see it myself but I feel it a
little.”
“When I was wounded we were talking about it. Passini was talking.”
The priest put down the glass. He was thinking about something else.
“I know them because I am like they are,” he said.

This passage occurs in the novel, A Farewell To Arms, by Ernest Hemingway. It shows how Hemingway has juxtaposed different ideas about knowing, not knowing, enjoying, not enjoying, and looking, not looking in the conversation between Rinaldi and the priest. Rinaldi even states that he does not see but only feels that is an interesting juxtaposition of two different ideas of seeing and feeling.

Example # 5

“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

This short poem presents the anaphoric juxtaposition of two different ideas as shown in the title. Frost compares both the ideas of fire and ice after equating them with love and hate and survival and destruction though survival is implicit and not explicit.

Example # 6

From Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

Zora Neal Hurston has beautifully reversed as well as juxtaposed two ideas remembrance and forgetting in the same sentence, joining them with a conjunction. Although it is a reversal of the same ideas, it is a beautiful juxtaposition that an African American woman writer has used.

How to Create Juxtaposition

1. Make a plan to compare, contrast, differentiate, or equate two events, characters, ideas, character traits, objects, or abstractions.
2. Think about where, how, and when you want to employ those two ideas.
3. Create a sentence with two ideas in it with both in different clauses, each clause having an equal number of words.
4. Read the sentence again to check that you have compared or contrasted them.
5. Now relate them to what you have used the idea for.

Benefits of Using Juxtaposition

1. Showing good or bad traits of a character through the juxtaposition of two characters such as God and Satan in Paradise Lost by John Milton, or Hamlet and Claudius in Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
2. Showing relations between ideas, races, nations, characters, and objects such as Claudius and Hamlet are related to each other. Black and white color are related to each other in racial discrimination.
3. Showing a binary opposition in the theoretical lenses.
4. Showing a sense of humor through comparison and contrast of opposite ideas such as in “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift.

Literary Device Juxtaposition in Literary Theory

1. Juxtaposition is an integral part of the formalistic analysis of a literary piece as it shows different ideas compared, contrasted, and equated to each other such as totalitarianism and democracy have been contrasted in Animal Farm by George Orwell and liberalism and authoritarianism have been contrasted in 1984 by George Orwell.
2. Juxtaposition is also very useful when analyzing a piece of literature from indigenous critical theory, critical race theory, or post-colonialism. It outlines the binary oppositions of different cultures, races, and social structures during the analysis of the texts written in these cultural scenarios.
3. It also helps in outlining ideas in the reader’s response theory as it juxtaposes the author and the text, the reader and the author, and the author’s ideas and ideas of the society in which he lives.

Suggested Readings

Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geoffrey Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Cengage Learning, 2014. Print.

Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. Literature, Criticism and Theory. Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2004. Print.

Horrocks, Roger. Mosaic: A Study of Juxtaposition in Literature, As An Approach to Pound’s Cantos and Similar Modern Poems. Diss. ResearchSpace@ Auckland, 1976. Ebook. Sontag, Susan. “Happenings: An Art of Radical Juxtaposition.” Against Interpretation (1966): 263-74.