Parallelism can be used at various levels within a literary work, including words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Within a sentence, the author can repeat the structure of a phrase. In chapter 5, a sergeant and a group of the soldiers come to the forge to ask for help from Joe, the blacksmith, in fixing a pair of handcuffs. Pip describes their attitudes as they wait. The first phrase begins with a prepositional phrase and uses past tense, but all subsequent phrases use the present participle; each phrase is separated with a semicolon and begins with “now”—for example “now, resting a knee.”
And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, with their hands loosely clasped before them; now, resting a knee or a shoulder; now, easing a belt or a pouch; now, opening the door to spit stiffly over their high stocks, out into the yard.
Similarly, within a paragraph, the author can repeat the same sentence structure. In chapter 8, Pip describes his personality as formed during his childhood and...
(The entire section contains 3 answers and 1142 words.)
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