Anaphora is a literary device in which the writer or speaker deliberately repeats the first part of a sentence in order to create artistic emphasis. The Literary Devices dictionary gives us the following example of anaphora found in a biblical psalm:
O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me... (Psalms 6:1-2, King James Version)
Here, the repetition of "O LORD" creates anaphora.
In the early chapters Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, one example of anaphora can be found in Scout's early description of Calpurnia, the Finches' cook:
Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was as wide as a bed slat and twice as hard. She was always ordering me out of the kitchen (Ch. 1).
Since Scout dislikes Calpurnia at the beginning of the novel, Scout uses anaphora to emphasize Calpurnia's negative qualities in an effort to elicit empathy from the reader, in order to help the reader see Calpurnia as the tyrant Scout perceives her to be.
A second example of anaphora can be found in Chapter 4. Scout's very first school year is just about to end, and she expresses her elation at the thought of approaching summer vacation in the following:
Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill (Ch. 4).
Here, Scout creates anaphora through her repetition of both "summer was" and "it was" to describe summer as a wonderful time and thereby make the reader empathize with her anticipatory, happy emotions.
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