Symploce (sim’-plo-see or sim’-plo-kee): The combination of anaphora and epistrophe: beginning a series of lines, clauses, or sentences with the same word or phrase while simultaneously repeating a different word or phrase at the end of each element in this series.
Where there is a will, there’s a way. Uncle Ed was going to die soon.
Where there’s a will there’s a way. I was going to be rich soon.
Uncle Ed had tons of money. He had a truckload of gold that he had bought back in the day for $35.00 per ounce. Over the years its value had gone insane—it was now worth $4,000 per ounce. Ed’s “truckload” was probably worth 20 billion dollars.
I had been kissing Uncle Ed’s ass since I was sixteen. I treated him like a king. I got him hooked on cigarettes and fed his desire for alcohol. I can’t tell you how many times I left him passed out in the afternoon. Scoring alcohol wasn’t much of a challenge. My best friend’s father owned a liquor store and my friend supplied me with bottles of Gypsy Rose for free! I was hoping Uncle Ed’s liver would go to hell soon and so would he.
I am ashamed to say, I started drinking Gypsy Rose in the 7th grade. Me and Ed would hoist bottles and toast each other. But, I didn’t lose sight of my goal: do in Uncle Ed’d liver and collect his coins. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” I said to myself and started going to AA. The group facilitator told me that I was the youngest drunk he had ever met. I felt good about that and got dried out.
I went to visit Uncle Ed. I had a case of Gypsy Rose for him. He reached out his shaking hands to take the wine. He dropped the wine and most of the bottles broke on the floor. Uncle Ed crawled to the kitchen, turned on the oven and stuck his head in. Uncle Ed was going to commit suicide! This was the kind of break I was looking for!
I got the hell out of there. I was almost home when I heard a loud explosion. Uncle Ed had blown himself up with his head in the oven! I heard sirens and went back up the street to watch Uncle Ed’s house burn to the ground. They brought him out on a stretcher. How the hell did he survive? He pointed at me and yelled “It was him! It was him!”
He died before he reached the ambulance. I wasn’t even questioned by the police who thought Uncle Ed was delirious. I was waiting to hear of my gigantic inheritance. I didn’t happen. Uncle Ed left his fortune to “The Wind.” Nobody could figure out who or what that was. So, all that money sits in trust and will be granted to the state of New York if the heir can’t be located.
I have started eating food that gives me gas. I intend to argue the “The Wind” is a reference to my copious farting—that I am “The Wind” and am entitled to the inheritance.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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