Anadiplosis is a literary device in which the last word of a sentence or clause is repeated at the start of the next sentence or clause. The repetition highlights the word, therefore making it more significant. It is an effective rhetorical device because it brings attention to the repeated word.
For example, Jesse Jackson used anadiplosis in his 1988 speech at the Democratic National Convention:
Don’t you surrender! Suffering breeds character; character breeds faith; in the end faith will not disappoint.
In this instance, anadiplosis is used when talking about cause and effect, as Jackson says character leads to faith, and so on. Shakespeare does this in Richard III:
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain.
This can also be found in pop culture, such as Yoda's quote from Star Wars:
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Anadiplosis can also add to the rhythm and cadence of the text, such as in "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe:
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Anadiplosis is used in poetry, such as in Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself:"
When I give I give myself.
In the nineteenth-century poem "Trying Skying" by Reverend M. Sheeleigh, anadiplosis is used to link every line:
Long I looked into the sky,
Sky aglow with gleaming stars,
Stars that stream their courses high,
High and grand, those golden cars,
Cars that ever keep their track,
Track untraced by human ray,
Ray that zones the zodiac,
Zodiac with milky-way,
Milky-way where worlds are sown,
Sown like sands along the sea,
Sea whoso tide and tone e'er own,
Own a feeling to be free,
Free to leave its lowly place,
Place to prove with yonder spheres,
Spheres that trace athrough all space
Space and years—unspoken years.
http://www.literarydevices.com/anadiplosis/
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