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ANAPHORA (a-na-pho-ra) occurs when the speaker repeats the same words at the start of successive sentences or clauses. This figure is a staple of high style, and so carries with it some risk of cliché; it gives an utterance the strong ring of oratory. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech is known by that name because those words are repeated at the start of eight sentences in a row: a famous modern instance of anaphora.

Anaphora generally serves two principal purposes. Returning to the same words creates a hammering effect; the repeated language is certain to be noticed, likely to be remembered, and readily conveys strong feeling. Starting sentences with the same words also creates an involving rhythm. The rhythm may be good in itself, and it causes the ear to expect the pattern to continue. That expectation can then be satisfied or disrupted in various useful ways.

1. Repetition of the subject with changes in the verb. Anaphora is helpful for describing different things all done, or to be done, by the same subject. Often it also involves repetition of an auxiliary verb while the main verb changes; when used with the active voice in the first person, such constructions can produce a sense of inexorability:

The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.

Exodus 15:9

But be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley; we may show mercy – we shall ask for none.

Churchill, London radio broadcast (1940)

Churchill’s anaphora of future action – we shall, we shall, we shall – creates a sense of resolution that underscores the substance of what he is saying.

The same construction can be used passively, to describe a series of things all done to the same person:

I say to you that if you rear yourself against it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed.

Dickens, Bleak House (1853)

The anaphora gives the language a battering quality that again matches the underlying meaning.

Anaphora of this kind also can create a comprehensive sound, as when the speaker wishes to create a sense that all possibilities are covered (or all things but one):

But madmen never meet. It is the only thing they cannot do. They can talk, they can inspire, they can fight, they can found religions; but they cannot meet.

Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men (1912)

He’s too delightful. If he’ll only not spoil it! But they always will; they always do; they always have.

James, The Ambassadors (1903)

They always do, by itself, captures about the same literal meaning as the longer enumeration of past, present, and future; but the anaphora gives the result an exhaustive feel to go with the exhaustive substance.

2. Repetition of the subject with different complements, as when applying several modifiers to the same person or thing. Repeating the subject and verb gives each claim its own emphasis:

Every man sees that he is that middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant.

Emerson, Spiritual Laws (1841)

The anaphora enables Emerson to independently affirm each statement and set it vividly against its contrary. The parallel nature of the claims is strengthened both by the repetition at the start (he is . . . he is) and by the omission of any conjunction at the end – a use of asyndeton, which has its own chapter later.

Here is a fine case of the same construction turned to the purpose of negation:

I certainly should dread more from a wild-cat in my bedchamber than from all the lions that roar in the deserts behind Algiers. But in this parallel it is the cat that is at a distance, and the lions and tigers that are in our antechambers and our lobbies. Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our neighbor; Algiers is not infectious.

Burke, Letter on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France (1796)

Anaphora also can heighten the contrast between affirmative and negative constructions when they are mixed:

Why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who are their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are benevolent, you are well informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage.

Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades (1905)

Here is the same general idea, though without the explicit negative at the end:

I shall lay this siege in form, Elvira; I am angry; I am indignant; I am truculently inclined; but I thank my Maker I have still a sense of fun.

Stevenson, New Arabian Nights (1882)

The regularity of the anaphora at the start creates a stronger contrast at the end – not with a negative claim, but with an affirmative one that is different in tone from what has come before. The substance and the structure of the sentence both change direction.

3. Repetition of the subject and verb with different objects, or phrases doing similar work.

They wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr. Jarndyce had – or had not.

Dickens, Bleak House (1853)

And now let me tell you we know all about the cheque – Soames’s cheque. We know where you got it. We know who stole it. We know how it came to the person who gave it to you. It’s all very well talking, but when you’re in trouble always go to a lawyer.

Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)

In both cases repeating the subject and verb gives them a prominence they would lack if they appeared only at the start. Thus about the same substantive impression might be created in the second passage by listing the items serially (we know where you got it, who stole it, and how it came. . .), but repeating the subject and verb leaves we know ringing in the ears; it lays stress not just on the things known but on who knows them.

I can not forgive that judge upon the bench, or that governor in the chair of state, who has lightly passed over such offenses. I can not forgive the public, in whose opinion the duelist finds a sanctuary. I can not forgive you, my brethren, who till this late hour have been silent while successive murders were committed.

Nott, sermon at Albany (1804)

The anaphora makes each sentence a distinct pointing of the finger. The speaker points outward twice, then the hand turns toward the listener. The construction is used similarly here:

I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the ironed leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted. . . .

Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)

In both of these last cases, the listener gets involved in the repetition of subject and verb and perhaps isn’t very struck by the objects to which they are attached – until the object is changed in a surprising way at the end of the last round.

4. Changes in modifying language. Various combinations of the elements so far considered – subject, verb, and complement – may be repeated, with changes just in the modifying words that follow them.

He was goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed to-day. He has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he can’t stand it.

Dickens, Hard Times (1854)

The principal uses of this construction are the same as those seen under our other recent headings. It can, as in the case just shown, make a condition sound pervasive or constant. Instead or in addition, the device can be used to set up a contrast between the early elements and an unexpected climax:

Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT.

Johnson, in Boswell’s Life (1791)

The first sentence uses anaphora in the same way the previous passage from Dickens did: to drive home how relentlessly dull the subject was. But it also prepares the ear for the pleasure of the surprise ending.

Those are straightforward cases where identical statements are followed by modifiers that just change the time or place of their occurrence (last night, the night before last, today; or in company, in his closet, everywhere). But the same sort of construction can be used to enlarge on a theme in more elaborate ways.

They have bought their knowledge, they have bought it dear, they have bought it at our expense, but at any rate let us be duly thankful that they now at last possess it.

Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1936)

And when this new principle – this new proposition that no human being ever thought of three years ago – is brought forward, I combat it as having an evil tendency, if not an evil design. I combat it as having a tendency to dehumanize the negro, to take away from him the right of ever striving to be a man. I combat it as being one of the thousand things constantly done in these days to prepare the public mind to make property, and nothing but property, of the negro in all the States of this Union.

Lincoln, debate with Stephen Douglas at Alton (1858)

This time the stem (I combat it) is short compared to the various elaborations attached to it. Repeating the stem helps prevent the action in the sentence from being lost in the long explanation of its rationale. The speaker’s basic position becomes a kind of refrain.

A case of this sort of anaphora from scripture:

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!

Matthew 23:13–16

5. To elaborate on a single word. A variation on the pattern just shown uses anaphora to state a subject repeatedly, with each round joined to a longer descriptive phrase afterwards.

To whom then would I make the East-India Company accountable? Why, to parliament, to be sure; to parliament, from which their trust was derived; to parliament, which alone is capable of comprehending the magnitude of its object, and its abuse; and alone capable of an effectual legislative remedy.

Burke, speech on East India Bill (1783)

How, then, have we become enslaved? Alas! England, that ought to have been to us a sister and a friend – England, whom we have protected, and whom we do protect – England, at a period when, out of 100,000 of the seamen in her service, 70,000 were Irish, England stole upon us like a thief in the night, and robbed us of the precious gem of our liberty; she stole from us “that in which naught enriched her, but made us poor indeed.”

Sheil, argument for the defense in the trial of John O’Connell (1843)

And yet in all this we are told that there is something to create extreme alarm and suspicion; we, who have never fortified any places; we, who have not a greater than Sebastopol at Gibraltar; we, who have not an impregnable fortress at Malta, who have not spent the fortune of a nation almost in the Ionian Islands; we, who are doing nothing at Alderney; we are to take offence at the fortifications of Cherbourg!

Bright, Principles of Foreign Policy (1858)

In each of last two cases the anaphora postpones the action of the sentence while description of the subject is piled higher and higher, thus creating some suspense: what finally will be said about it? And in each case notice the contrast between the last statement made about the subject and all the ones that came before, which effectively served to set up the contrasting climax.

6. Repeating descriptive language at the start, as when several things share some important quality.

I thought it had the most dismal trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the most dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that I had ever seen.

Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)

Or perhaps the speaker wants instead to stress the common way in which various things are accomplished:

I give this heavy weight from off my head

And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,

The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;

With mine own tears I wash away my balm,

With mine own hands I give away my crown,

With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,

With mine own breath release all duty’s rites:

All pomp and majesty I do forswear. . . .

Richard II, 4, 1

By agitation Ireland became strong; by agitation she put down her bitter enemies; by agitation has conscience been set free; by agitation Irish freedom has been purchased; and by agitation it shall be secured.

O’Connell, speech in the House of Commons (1830)

Or over what common period of time:

It is the most grievous consequence of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years – five years of futile good intentions, five years of eager search for the line of least resistance, five years of uninterrupted retreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defenses.

Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1938)

Sometimes repeating a modifier is just a helpful way to present action and link the elements of it together:

Three machines – three horses – three flounderings – three turnings round – three splashes – three gentlemen, disporting themselves in the water like so many dolphins.

Dickens, Sketches by Boz (1836)

Now the dogs of war being let loose, began to lick their bloody lips; now Victory, with golden wings, hung hovering in the air; now Fortune, taking her scales from her shelf, began to weigh the fates of Tom Jones, his female companion, and Partridge, against the landlord, his wife, and maid. . . .

Fielding, Tom Jones (1749)

The repeated now helps to unify the sentence; and naming the time in this way paints the picture more vividly, as if the author points to or conducts action occurring in the present and marks its pace. Fielding is having some fun here, as he often did, with a construction that was prominent in classical epic.

A variant of this theme is the modifying word stated repeatedly with various reasons for it appended afterwards. It much resembles a similar construction we saw at the end of section 3, above (the repeated noun with different language afterwards).

I mentioned £80,000, the new expenses created by the last ministry; expenses memorable, because they happen to be equal to the whole amount of the new taxes; memorable, for they are a strain of profusion unparallelled; memorable, because men ashamed of that ministry on account of such expence endeavour to entail that expence upon the people. . . .

Grattan, speech in the Irish Parliament (1778)

I have shown that slavery is wicked – wicked, in that it violates the great law of liberty, written on every human heart – wicked, in that it violates the first command of the decalogue – wicked, in that it fosters the most disgusting licentiousness – wicked, in that it mars and defaces the image of God by cruel and barbarous inflictions – wicked, in that it contravenes the laws of eternal justice, and tramples in the dust all the humane and heavenly precepts of the New Testament.

Douglass, speech at Rochester (1850)

Without the repetition the reader would become involved in the details of the reasoning, the statement of which would get farther and farther from the word it is all meant to explain. Returning to the word reminds the ear of the judgment being made, refreshes the listener’s attention, and renews the passion in the utterance.

7. Long stems. In the examples seen so far, anaphora has usually meant just a short similarity at the start of successive sentences or clauses. The repeated language can go on longer, however, and so create a bit of suspense and surprise: the listener sits through almost the entire phrase a second time before learning how it will end differently.

Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?

Was ever woman in this humour won?

Richard III, 1, 2

The thing which is fundamentally and really frivolous is not a careless joke. The thing which is fundamentally and really frivolous is a careless solemnity.

Chesterton, Heretics (1905)

Perhaps it may be our turn soon; perhaps it may be our turn now.

Churchill, speech at London (1941)

8. Miniatures. Anaphora creates a distinctly energetic effect when applied at the start of several short phrases in a row.

There is nothing simple, nothing manly, nothing ingenuous, open, decisive, or steady, in the proceeding, with regard either to the continuance or the repeal of the taxes.

Burke, Speech on American Taxation (1774)

Notice that the anaphora establishes a pattern (nothing simple, nothing manly) which is then relaxed (nothing ingenuous, open, decisive, or steady) – a classic pattern we will consider in more detail below. Here is a similar case from the same source:

It is, indeed, a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the imposers or satisfaction to the subject.

Burke, Speech on American Taxation (1774)

Burke attractively lengthens the parts as the sentence goes on: pedantry (three syllables), disputation (four), war and rebellion (five), and then the long finale. The anaphora provides a consistent anchor from which these extensions can depart.

He was almost at his wit’s end; – talked it over with her in all moods; – placed his arguments in all lights; – argued the matter with her like a christian, – like a heathen, – like a husband, – like a father, – like a patriot, – like a man: – My mother answered every thing only like a woman. . . .

Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1760)

This time the phrases marked by anaphora (like a. . .) are shorter than the phrases that come earlier in the sentence and the one that comes afterward. One effect of this is a kind of oscillation in the passage, as the phrases go from longer to shorter to long again; another effect is to add force to the phrases with anaphora, since they attract attention not only by the repetition at the start of them but also because they are so short. The anaphora is lightly resumed at the very end: setting the lone last instance of it (like a woman) against the multiple cases that came earlier helps to support the substantive point of the passage – the comparative narrowness of the mother’s reply.

9. Anaphora upon anaphora. Repetition at the start can serve as a stylistic motif, with different words repeated in different ways that echo each other.

a. Consecutive cases. Here is a simple example in which one instance of anaphora (your, your, your) is immediately followed by another (show, show, show).

They tell you, Sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible incumbrance to you; for it has of late been ever at war with your interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend for to be reason, show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please.

Burke, Speech on American Taxation (1774)

A more ambitious example, with four uses of anaphora in a single sentence:

[A]h! if I could show you this! if I could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls!

Stevenson, Pulvis et Umbra (1888)

When stacking anaphora in this way, pay attention again to the lengths of the repeated phrases. It is appealing to set off the regularity of the anaphora with variety in other respects, as when each batch of it differs in the length of its parts from the one before. The passage from Stevenson contains good examples: the middle use of it – without hope, without help, without thanks – uses shorter parts than the first (under every. . .) and last (still obscurely fighting . . . still clinging. . .). In the more common pattern, there are two rounds of anaphora rather than three; the first round consists of longer clauses, and the second of short ones:

[Y]ou, Sir, who delight to utter execrations against the American commissioners of 1778, on account of their hostility to America; – you, Sir, who manufacture stage-thunder against Mr. Eden, for his anti-American principles; – you, Sir, whom it pleases to chaunt a hymn to the immortal Hamden; – you, Sir, approved of the tyranny exercised against America; – and you, Sir, voted 4,000 Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans fighting for their freedom, fighting for your freedom, fighting for the great principle, liberty; but you found, at last (and this should be an eternal lesson to men of your craft and your cunning), that the King had only dishonoured you. . . .

Grattan, speech in the Irish Parliament (1783)

The you, Sir clauses are the long uses of anaphora, and the fighting for clauses are the short ones – the sorts of miniatures we saw under the previous heading. The shorter second round of repetition creates a sense of acceleration and climax. Here is a similar case where anaphora again is used once with long pieces and then twice with short:

It was he who set the guards on to Winston and who prevented them from killing him. It was he who decided when Winston should scream with pain, when he should have a respite, when he should be fed, when he should sleep, when the drugs should be pumped into his arm. It was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers. He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend.

Orwell, 1984 (1949)

b. Embedded cases. Uses of anaphora also can be embedded within one another, as in the previous example and as in the next case, where the first use of anaphora (reduced. . .) is suspended in the middle to make room for another (power. . .), but is resumed at the end:

We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word “war” was considered one which would be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power – power to do good, power to be generous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right – reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now.

Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1938)

Or here, where the in came . . . in they all came constructions make way for some shyly, some boldly, etc., but then are brought back for the finish:

In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow.

Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)

10. Regularity and relief. An important technical question when using anaphora is how regular to make the repetition. Variety can be gained by abandoning the device at the end; the ear is pleased by the repetition, then pleased by the relief from it. The use of flat rather than low here is a good small example:

[I]ts low gates and low wall and low roofs and low ditches and low sand-hills and low ramparts and flat streets, had not yielded long ago to the undermining and besieging sea, like the fortifications children make on the sea-shore.

Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)

The more common use of abandonment comes after a whole phrase has been repeated at the start of successive clauses or sentences, then is dropped for the last one.

He had his plans for Poland and his plans for Norway. He had his plans for Denmark. He had his plans all worked out for the doom of the peaceful, trustful Dutch; and, of course, for the Belgians.

Churchill, London radio broadcast (1940)

The day of an intelligent small dog is passed in the manufacture and the laborious communication of falsehood; he lies with his tail, he lies with his eye, he lies with his protesting paw; and when he rattles his dish or scratches at the door his purpose is other than appears.

Stevenson, The Character of Dogs (1884)

The effect is a little like blowing up a balloon with short breaths and then letting it go; the repetition of words and structure accustoms the reader to regularity and compression, and the energy of that expectation is released into the last part of the sentence when the patterns are dropped.

Abandonment – or irregularity, to be more precise – is put to slightly different use in this celebrated passage of Churchill’s:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. . . .

Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1940)

This moment in the speech is best-known for the repeated words themselves (we shall fight. . .), but notice what strength it gains from its internal variety. The parts separated by commas vary in size, lengthening fairly steadily until the middle, then starting shorter again, and then lengthening, and then shortening. The full form of the anaphora – we shall fight – comes and goes, both obviously (we shall defend our island; we shall never surrender) and in smaller ways (in the fields and in the streets – not we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the streets, etc.). These irregularities give the passage a greater sense of passion, of improvisation, and of the spontaneous outburst than it would have if the anaphora and repeated structure were more regular.

The anaphora also creates a repeated foundation onto which Churchill adds other kinds of variety – movement not only between different kinds of imagery (seas and oceans . . . the air . . . the beaches, etc.) but also between concrete images like those and the more abstract language at the start and end (We shall go on to the end . . . we shall never surrender). The passage taken as a whole illustrates very well the power of rhetorical technique to create an utterance of great force and utility; the substance of it could have been expressed concisely, and forgettably, in seven or eight words.