Either/Or Literary Elements

Either/Or Literary Elements

Genre

Philosophical

Setting and Context

19th Century

Narrator and Point of View

Narrator A and Narrator B.

Tone and Mood

Thoughtful, sarcastic, moralistic, self-indulgent, meditative, and artistic.

Protagonist and Antagonist

The narrators are both the protagonists and the antagonists.

Major Conflict

Reconciliation of aesthetics with morals.

Climax

The Seducer’s abandonment of Cordelia at the climax of their affair.

Foreshadowing

N/A

Understatement

The term fragment understates the completeness of life. The title hints at the protagonist’s struggles to experience fulfillment in life.

Allusions

Allusion to art such as poems and Mozart.
Biblical and philosophical allusions.

Imagery

The Seducer is self-centred and cunning.

Paradox

N/A.

Parallelism

Principles of hedonism and paralleled to the principles of ethics.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

Either/Or denotes a dilemma.

Personification

The Old Testament is personified.

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