Antithesis Aloud: Balancing Opposites

Read antithetical sentences so the two opposed halves are heard as a balanced pair.

Antithesis sets contrasting ideas side by side in balanced phrases: 'It was a season of plenty for the few and of want for the many. ' The power comes from the symmetry, so your voice must make both halves sound like matching weights on a scale. Read the first half with a slight lift at its end, pause briefly at the hinge, then read the second half with the same rhythm but a falling, conclusive pitch. Stress falls on the opposed pairs: plenty and want, few and many.

A helpful exercise is to tap the rhythm of each half; if the taps match, the writer has built strict parallelism, and you should preserve it rather than rushing the second half. Antithesis often appears at the climax of a speech or the end of a paragraph because it is memorable, so it deserves a slower pace than the sentences around it. Reading it quickly, as ordinary prose, wastes its design.

• 1Antithesis balances contrasting ideas in parallel form.
• 2Stress the opposed pairs.
• 3Lift at the hinge, fall at the end.
• 4Slow down; antithesis is built to be remembered.