Hi, it's Mr. Sato. Let me explain parallel structure.
Parallel structure, or parallelism, is the repetition of similar words or phrases that
have the same grammatical structure. Now don't worry, you don t necessarily
need to understand formal grammar to do this. You just have to be able to hear it. A list,
for example is a simple form of parallel structure. Here are three examples from
Frederick Douglass' "Letter to My (Former) Master."
That's a list of three nouns: theft, robbery, and murder.
Now here's an example of parallel structure using verbs.
There's actually a long list of verbs here: overseers who would pollute, blight,
and blast-- followed by a list of verb phrases-- rob her dignity, destroy her virtue, and annihilate
her graces. The grammatical structure there is verb-her-noun, verb-her-noun, and verb-her-noun.
All three of these were from Letter to My (Former) Master.
All of them are also examples of the Rule of 3.
I made another video about that principle. It's short. Check it out.
But one of the greatest masters of parallel structure was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Here are some examples from "Letter From Birmingham Jail." First a list of adjectives.
Hard, brutal, and unbelievable are all adjectives describing the facts about
segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. That s pretty straightforward. But Dr. King
often uses long and complex forms of parallel structure. Look at this one:
Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because, Isn't this like condemning Socrates because,
Isn't this like condemning Jesus because. Here, he repeated the first half of the sentence three times.
This quote is a good reminder, by the way, that Dr. King was a doctor of theology.
Here's another from "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Dr. King s writing is full of great
examples and I'm not even going to get to his "I Have a Dream" speech. Read this famous quote.
See how "injustice anywhere" isn't just grammatically parallel to "justice everywhere?"
And "affects one directly" isn t just parallel to "affects all indirectly?" They're paired opposites
using nearly identical wording to communicate a contrasting idea, that injustice anywhere in
the world, even in your little corner of it, is a threat to the universal principle of justice.
We are caught and tied is parallel too. Here's another example of paired opposites.
"Shallow understanding" is paired with "absolute misunderstanding." "People of good will" is
contrasted with "people of ill will." See how that works? It conveys his frustration with nice people
who don't deeply understand, and how they're worse than mean people who don't have a clue, because at
least the mean people aren't patting themselves on the back as being kind or understanding when
their actions bring about the same result as the actions of the people actively fighting him.
And I saved this one for last. Here's the most impressive example of parallel structure I have
ever seen. It's a long one. These, again, are all from Letter From Birmingham Jail.
Pause the video so you can read the whole thing. It's all one gigantic sentence.
Did you read it? OK, he gives a long list of
examples that Black Americans are sick and tired of having to put up with: 'When you have seen"
"when you have seen" again, "when you see," "when you find," "when you have to," "when you take,"
"when you are humiliated," "when your name becomes," "when your wife and mother are never given," and
"when you are forever fighting," and then he finally drops the conclusion of the sentence,
"then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." But that's not all.
Within that list are more examples of parallel structure:
"lynch your mothers and fathers," and "drown your sisters and brothers."
He writes "tongue twisted" and "speech stammering."
When he talks about his child, he asks the reader to "see her tears welling up,"
"see the depressing clouds of inferiority form," "see her begin to distort her personality."
And some examples of parallel structure overlap. Remember "when your first name becomes?"
He mirrors that "your first name becomes" with "your middle name becomes."
And overlapping with "when you are harried" is "harried by day and haunted by night."
Pretty amazing, right? Parallel structure is a powerful poetic
device that can be used in prose, in sentences and paragraphs like these. Try it yourself. Start
small with a list of some kind. Just make sure the parts of the list are the same part of speech. So,
not eating and sleeping, dance lessons and fun. Keep those parts of speech parallel: Eating and
sleeping, dancing and having fun. See, all of these are what are called gerunds, also known as
-ing verbs. Eating, sleeping, dancing, having. Okay, I've just given you a superpower that
you can use to make your writing striking, musical, and elevated in tone.
Have fun with it.