Editing Stylistic device (section)

===Motif===
{{main article|Motif (narrative)}}
When a word, phrase, image, or idea is repeated throughout a work or several works of literature.

For example, in Ray Bradbury's short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains", he describes a futuristic "smart house" in a post-nuclear-war time. All life is dead except for one dog, which dies in the course of the story. However, Bradbury mentions mice, snakes, robins, swallows, giraffes, antelopes, and many other animals in the course of the story. This animal motif establishes a contrast between the past, when life was flourishing, and the story's present when all life is dead.

Motifs may also be used to establish mood (as the blood motif in Shakespeare's ''[[Macbeth]]''), for foreshadowing (as when Mary Shelley, in ''Frankenstein'', mentions the moon almost every time the creature is about to appear), to support the theme (as when, in Sophocles' drama ''Oedipus Rex'', the motif of prophecy strengthens the theme of the irresistibility of the gods), or for other purposes.