What Is Juxtaposition?

Melchior Antoine
Nov 28, 2024
7 min read

Updated: Jul 13

Juxtaposition is a literary device that places two things side by side to highlight their differences. The contrasting elements could include ideas, characters, settings, or emotions. Let's take a look at an example of juxtaposition in Shakespeare:

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.

Hamlet juxtaposes inaction against action in the face of misfortune. Inaction is described as "to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." On the other hand, action is described as "take arms against a sea of troubles." The conjunction "Or" further emphasizes the contrast between these two things.

Juxtapositions don't always have to be obvious. They may work even better when they are more subtle and more difficult to tease out. A good example of this would be "Sonnet" by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1922):

I had not thought of violets late,

The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet

In wistful April days, when lovers mate[3]

And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.

The thought of violets meant florists' shops,

And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;[6]

And garish lights, and mincing little fops

And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines.

So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,[9]

I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams;

The perfect loveliness that God has made,—

Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.[12]

And now—unwittingly, you've made me dream

Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.

The poet is contrasting store-purchased violets with wild-grown violets. Nelson wrote the poem as a sonnet (as the name implies), and she takes full advantage of the traditional structure of the sonnet, including the volta or turn. In the first eight lines called the octave, store-purchased violets are associated with the conventionalities of everyday life, such as "cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines" (Line 8). The word "deadening" gives us a hint of how depressing this life could be.

However, the sestet (or last six lines of the sonnet) presents the turn (or volta). The poet speaks of wild violets and the beauty and freedom that they are associated with, such as "Heaven-mounting dreams"(Line 12).

Picture of Alice Dunbar Nelson, author of "Sonnet," a poem that relies on juxtaposition. — Portrait of Alice Dunbar Nelson

A sonnet about love and flowers could have been tired and boring. After all, we have read hundreds of such poems. However, by taking the same object (violets) and placing it in different settings and linking them to different associations, the poet creates an effective juxtaposition that lifts this sonnet above conventional love poetry.

Why writers use juxtaposition

Writers use juxtaposition to enhance the complexity and depth of their storytelling. Juxtaposition can help emphasize themes, reveal character traits, or create dramatic tension. For example, by placing a cheerful scene next to a tragic one, the sadness feels more pronounced.

However, the main point of juxtaposition is to highlight contrast. At its best, juxtapositions give a concrete feel to abstract ideas and concepts. It does show by throwing strongly opposing ideas into stark contrast.

Examples of juxtaposition

1. Lady Macbeth vs. Lady Macduff

In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is a main character of the play, who encourages her husband to engage in the immoral act of murdering his king, King Duncan, while Duncan sleeps as a guest in the MacBeth home. Lady MacDuff is used as a juxtaposition or foil character against Lady Macbeth. Lady Macduff is portrayed as a woman who is pure in virtue and who would not think of engaging in harm against the innocent.

Here are two quotes from Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff, respectively, to demonstrate this contrast:

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5:

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full

Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,

Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry "Hold, hold!"

Here, Lady Macbeth is praying to be possessed by evil spirits to strengthen or even possess her in committing an evil or immoral act. It is a willful act of cruelty and immorality. She knows that it is wrong, yet ignores her conscience and seems to pray to be "unsexed," as she sees compassion and mercy as weaknesses associated with feminity. She goes as far as to ask these evil spirits to "take my milk for gall."

This is in stark contrast to Lady Macduff, who is introduced just before she and her son are killed by assassins hired by Macbeth in Act 4, Scene 2:

I have done no harm. But I remember now

I am in this earthly world; where to do harm

Is often laudable, to do good sometime

Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas,

Do I put up that womanly defence,

To say I have done no harm?

Here, she is stressing her innocence after being warned that she may be killed. She seems to agree with Lady Macbeth that innocence or doing no harm is a womanly virtue when she describes it as a "womanly defense." However, this is a virtue that she embraces and before being killed answers her murderer asking for where her husband is with the defiant response: "I hope, in no place so unsanctified /Where such as thou mayst find him."

Even in the face of death, she highlights the innocence and purity of the Macduff household against the immorality of the Macbeth household and its agents (the assassins in the scene), where even the evil presence of Macbeth's agents renders a place "unsanctified."

2. Keats, "Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art" (1838):

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,[3]

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,[6]

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,[9]

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,[12]

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Just as with Alice Nelson, Keats takes full advantage of the traditional sonnet structure in employing juxtaposition. Keats here uses two analogies, which he juxtaposes against each other. The first analogy in the first eight lines of the sonnet is negative. He describes the aspect of the star that he has no desire to resemble or which he rejects. He compares the star "hung aloft the night" (Line 2 ) to a Christian hermit or "nature's Eremite," a word that also means hermit.

The second analogy is positive and contained in the last six lines of the poem. This is the comparison with the star that the poet desires. He wishes to be loyal and steadfast to his beloved through romantic or sexual union, which is in stark contrast to the chastity and Christian asceticism featured in the first eight lines of the poem.

3. Hawthorne, "The Birth-Mark" (1843):

In the short story "The Birth-Mark," Hawthorne juxtaposes the scientist Aylmer with his assistant Aminadab. Aylmer seeks to cure his almost perfect wife, Georgiana, of one small imperfection, the tiny hand-shaped birthmark on her cheek. He and his servant Aminadab work to create a cure. Here is a passage making a juxtaposition between the reactions of the two men after achieving success removing the birthmark:

"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success! And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant Aminadab's expression of delight.

Aylmer is happy about the birthmark being gone, whereas Aminadab is happy at what the disappearance of the birthmark means. The birthmark is the only thing that keeps Georgiana rooted to life. Now, that it's gone, she will die.

To understand the juxtaposition, we first need to explain what Alymer and Aminadab symbolize and to understand what's happening here. Aylmer, in the short story, symbolizes the ideal or quest for spiritual perfection. On the other hand, Aminadab is a symbol of the earth and the natural world. The birthmark was the only thing keeping the near-perfect Georgiana tied to earth. With it gone, Georgiana now passes unto the realm of spirit. Upon the death of Georgiana, Aminadab triumphs. Her mortal body now belongs to the earth and him, as her spirit parts ways with her husband.

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