The apostrophe literary device is a figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off to address someone absent or dead, or something that cannot answer: a star, a dagger, death itself. It has nothing to do with the punctuation mark that shares its name. The speaker addresses someone or something as though they could hear. Others may be present or overhear; what the speaker says is often the most exposed moment in the work.
Every example below is read through one question: who is being addressed, and what does speaking to them let the speaker do that describing them could not? The sections cover where the word comes from, how to spot an address, its uses with the dead, with nature, and in drama and song, and how it differs from personification.
In This Article
- Where the Word Comes From
- How to Tell an Address From a Description
- Speaking to the Absent and the Dead
- Addressing Nature and Ideas
- Apostrophe in Drama and Song
- Apostrophe Versus Personification
- How to Write About Apostrophe in an Essay
- Key Takeaways
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Recognize the Turn Toward an Addressee
Where the Word Comes From
Apostrophe comes from the Greek apostrophē, meaning "turning away." In classical rhetoric, a speaker turned from the audience in front of him to address someone or something else. That turn is still the whole device. The real audience stays where it is and overhears a one-sided exchange, because the speaker has stopped talking about a subject and started talking to it.
How to Tell an Address From a Description
The grammar gives it away. Look for second-person pronouns such as you, thou and thee, a name called out, or a command. "The moon rose over the barn" describes; "Moon, why do you follow me home?" addresses.
An opening "O" is common but optional. John Donne's sonnet begins "Death, be not proud" with no "O" at all, and the bare command hits harder than an exclamation would. It treats death as an opponent who can be told what to do, which makes the address an act of defiance. The poem closes the same way, speaking straight to its enemy: "Death, thou shalt die."
Speaking to the Absent and the Dead
In "London, 1802," William Wordsworth writes, "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour." Milton had died in 1674. Calling on him summons a moral authority against which Wordsworth measures the England of his own day, and the dead poet cannot object to the role he is handed.
Juliet's "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" turns that silence inside out. "Wherefore" means "why": she asks why he must be a Montague, believing he is nowhere near. He is standing below in the Capulet orchard, hearing every word.
So an address to someone believed absent becomes a confession overheard by the person it concerns. Romeo eventually answers. The scene's dramatic irony depends on Juliet thinking her listener is absent.
Addressing Nature and Ideas
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "Ode to the West Wind" in the autumn of 1819, and his own note says he conceived it in a wood beside the Arno near Florence as a storm gathered. The opening stanzas are crowded with what the wind is doing. It drives dead leaves "like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing," sheds loose clouds across the sky, and wakes "the blue Mediterranean" from its summer dreams. The first line is already an address, "O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being," and each of the first three numbered sections combines praise with an appeal to be heard: "hear, oh hear!"
Then the speaker turns to his own weakness, making the appeal explicitly personal. "I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!" he cries, before asking for the wind's power: "Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit!" He asks to be made the wind's lyre, as the forest is, and begs it to "Drive my dead thoughts over the universe."
A description could record the storm's force. Only an address puts a bleeding speaker in front of that force asking for something, and that turns the ode into a petition to a power he hopes will answer.
Apostrophe in Drama and Song
In Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1, Shakespeare's protagonist sees a dagger hanging in the air, "The handle toward my hand," and speaks to it: "Come, let me clutch thee." Speaking to the dagger moves Macbeth's murderous intent outside himself. He has already declared "I am settled" in Act 1, Scene 7. Now it is as though the weapon leads him toward Duncan's chamber and he only follows: the address makes his own murderous intention appear as a guide outside himself.
Song uses the device more gently. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" comes from Jane Taylor's 1806 poem "The Star," and calling the star "you" turns a distant object into a bedtime companion.
Apostrophe Versus Personification
Personification gives something nonhuman a human quality: "The sea grumbled against the pier." Apostrophe concerns whom the speaker addresses, not how the subject is described. The two often overlap without being the same thing.
Shelley's wind uses both, since it is spoken to and also given a will. Wordsworth's Milton needs no personification, because he was already human. The grumbling sea is personified but never addressed.
How to Write About Apostrophe in an Essay
Naming the device is the easy part. The more useful work is noticing what the writer does with it, and three choices recur.
The first is how the request changes. Shelley ends each of the first three numbered sections by asking the wind to hear him; later he asks it to lift him and make him its lyre. The appeal becomes a personal plea for relief and poetic power.
The second is whether the addressee answers. John Keats opens "Ode on a Grecian Urn," also from 1819, with "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness." He then questions the vase about its painted scenes ("What men or gods are these?") and gets no reply until the closing lines, which seem to come from the urn itself: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." Whether the urn speaks there, or the poet speaks for it, is one of the poem's lasting puzzles.
The third is who overhears. Juliet's speech means something different because Romeo is listening.
A strong paragraph names the addressee, quotes the line that addresses them, and says what the silence, the answer or the eavesdropper changes.
Key Takeaways
- Apostrophe is defined by direct address to a listener who is absent, dead or unable to reply.
- Pronouns, called-out names and commands mark it; an opening "O" is optional.
- An absent human addressee, like Wordsworth's Milton, needs no personification.
- The relationship the address sets up decides the effect: defiance in Donne, petition in Shelley, intimacy in "The Star."
- The most revealing details are where the address shifts, whether anyone answers, and who overhears.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an apostrophe a figurative device?
Yes, apostrophe is a figurative device: the speaker addresses an absent or dead person, an object, an abstraction or a god as though they could hear. The words themselves may be entirely literal. The imagined encounter is the figure.
What is the purpose of apostrophe in a poem?
Its purpose is to turn a feeling into a relationship, so the emotion plays out as an encounter instead of a report. Much apostrophe poetry takes the form of the ode, which is usually built around addressing its subject. The kind of relationship sets the tone, whether that is rivalry, pleading or questioning.
What is an example of an apostrophe?
Keats's sonnet "Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art" is a clear example. The speaker tells the star he wants its constancy but not its isolation, "Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night." The address lets him bargain with an object no one could bargain with.
What's the difference between apostrophe and personification?
Apostrophe is about who is spoken to, and personification is about what is given human traits. To identify apostrophe, check both the direct address and its target: an absent or dead person, an object, an abstraction or a god. Saying "you" to a present person, even one who stays silent, is not enough.
What are anaphora and apostrophe?
Anaphora repeats a word or phrase at the start of successive lines or clauses, while apostrophe directly addresses an absent or dead person, an object, an abstraction or a god. Walt Whitman's "O Captain! my Captain!", written in 1865 after Lincoln's assassination, combines them. In the second stanza, two consecutive lines begin "For you": "For you bouquets…" and "For you they call…". That repetition is anaphora; the direct address "O Captain! my Captain!" is apostrophe. The third stanza admits, "My Captain does not answer."
What does apostrophe mean in literature, as opposed to punctuation?
In punctuation, it is the mark that shows possession or omitted letters. A line full of "o'er" and "e'en" contains plenty of the mark and may contain no literary apostrophe at all.
Recognize the Turn Toward an Addressee
When you meet a possible apostrophe, first identify who or what is being addressed. Then ask what the speaker wants from that encounter and whether the work preserves the silence, imagines an answer or lets someone overhear. An address is not necessarily private: Juliet's apparently absent listener is close enough to hear her.