Polysyndeton


Polysyndeton (pol-y-syn’-de-ton): Employing many conjunctions between clauses, often slowing the tempo or rhythm. (Asyndeton is the opposite of polysyndeton: an absence of conjunctions.)


There was a house, and a yard, and a swimming pool, and a shooting range, and a garage, and a greenhouse, and a grill. It was home. It had always been home. When I first came through the front door, I was an infant. I learned to ride my bike in the driveway. I learned to shoot with unerring accuracy in the backyard shooting range. I could hit the head of a pin from 25 yards with a pistol.

I was 29–a little old to be living at home. Dad was selling the place. Soon, I’d be out on my own. He was asking $500,000 for the place. That’s a lot of money, but I was resolved to raise it and keep the property for myself. I tried “Go Fund Me” but nobody was interested. I got comments like “Idiot,” “This is the stupidest fundraising gambit I ever heard of,” “Give it up Bozo.”

I knew I needed another plan. So, I got my parents to make a will leaving the house to me. I convinced them they could die at any minute, even before they found a buyer for the house. I was planning on killing them both and blaming my notoriously psycho sister, who was living in a half-way house down the street from the state mental institution. Then, I decided it would be even better to get my sister to actually kill our parents.

I told my sister that I couldn’t hold it in any more: our parents were serial killers from the third dimension of the future’s origin on a secret Tik Tok channel run by apes. I told her that they specialized in killing children, but lately, they had developed a thirst for her blood. They would come to her apartment with empty coffee mugs they would fill with her blood after they slit her throat and drained her.

My sister was visibly shaken. I gave her a loaded .45 to protect herself. I called my parents and invited them over. I told them that all my sister’s coffee mugs had been broken by her cat, so they had to bring their own mugs. Then, I left.

Everything went fine! My sister killed our parents. I told the police that my sister had stolen the handgun from me. I inherited the house and am enjoying life!


Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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