King Hedley II Literary Elements

Drama

English

The action in the play is set in Pittsburgh in 1985.

Because this is a play, there is no narrator and no point of view.

The tone used in the play is a violent one.

The protagonist is King and the antagonist is the racist society in which King and the lest of the characters live.

The major conflict in the play is between King's desire to live an honest life and the desire to gain as much money as possible.

The play reaches its climax when King is killed at the end of the play.

King's death is foreshadowed by the description of the description of the death of the man killed by King.

When King claims that he will have a normal and honest life after being released from prison is an understatement because he starts stealing again as soon as he is released.

One of the major allusions in the play is the idea that there is no real hope for black people. The black characters in the play tried over and over again to change their destiny, without any result, and through this, the narrator suggests society will never allow a black person to succeed in life.

A common imagery in the play is that of the hopeless black person. This image appears from the beginning of the play and it is used to support the central theme of the play.

A paradoxical idea is the way in which King starts becoming involved in illegal activities as soon as he is released from prison even though those illegal activities were the reason why he ended up in prison in the first place.

A parallel can be drawn between King and his dead father. The parallel is used to show the way in which the characters in the play have no real hope for the future and how their path in life has already been drawn out from their birth.

We find a personification in the line "this floors will talk no mo'".

The narrator uses inner dialogue as a dramatic device in the play and it is also used to reveal the characters' beliefs and ideas.