Understanding assonance and how to use it in your writing

What is assonance?

Assonance is when you repeat vowel sounds close together in a sentence or phrase, but it’s not quite as tight as a pure rhyme. Sure, sometimes you use assonance as actual rhymes, but other times you repeat the same vowel sounds without specifically rhyming. A great example is this famous phrase from My Fair Lady:

• “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plains.”

The long “ai” sound repeats throughout the sentence to create a memorable rhythm. Sometimes the “ai” sound rhymes, other times it merely pairs with the others without rhyming.

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Now, for clarification, assonance doesn’t only apply to pieces read or sung out loud, but it also applies to text read silently. When we read to ourselves, we intuitively hear the sounds inside our heads. We don’t need to say the word “cat” out loud to know it rhymes with “hat.”

When used well, assonance creates:

• Rhythm. Most importantly, assonance creates rhythm. Rhythm generates moods, evokes emotions, and enhances ideas. As an example, we may recognize the “oo” sound as spooky, or the short “i” as icky. A clever writer can use this to their advantage to tap into specific moods and emotions in their work.
• Emphasis. Humans love repetition, so much so that when we hear something repeated, it naturally places an important emphasis on it. Assonance makes a sentence or phrase stand out—and we readers eat it up.

Difference between assonance, consonance, and alliteration

Assonance and consonance are literary siblings. While assonance refers to repeated vowel sounds, consonance refers to repeated consonants.

Now, you may be thinking, “I thought repeated letters in words were called alliteration.” They are similar but not the same. While assonance refers to repeated vowel sounds anywhere within the word, alliteration refers to repeated sounds, vowels, or consonants, solely at the very beginning of each word.

Assonance: “The supernatural goo oozed through the room.”
Consonance: “Zoe was amazed she didn’t sneeze.”
Alliteration: “Hattie hurried home to heat up her hamburger.”

Examples of assonance

You’ll find assonance in theatre, music, poetry, speeches, and more. Use these examples for inspiration as you integrate this literary device into your work.

Satisfied from Hamilton by Lin Manuel Miranda

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better example of assonance than the song Angelica Schuyler raps in the musical Hamilton. In this scene, Angelica has a secret crush on Alexander Hamilton, but so does her younger sister Eliza. Knowing she could never ultimately be with Alexander, she sacrifices her own happiness by introducing Alexander to her sister, whom he eventually marries instead.

Angelica Schuyler:
“He’s after me because I’m a Schuyler sister
That elevates his status
I’d have to be naive to set that aside
Maybe that is why I introduce him to Eliza
Now that’s his bride
Nice going Angelica, he was right, you will never be satisfied”

Alexander Hamilton:
“Thank you for all your service
If it takes fighting a war for us to meet, it will have been worth it”

Angelica Schuyler:
“I’ll leave you to it
I know my sister like I know my own mind
You will never find anyone as trusting or as kind
If I tell her that I love him she’d be silently resigned
He’d be mine
She would say “I’m fine“, she’d be lying
But when I fantasize at night, it’s Alexander’s eyes
As I romanticize what might have been if I hadn’t sized
Him up so quickly
At least my dear Eliza’s his wife
At least I keep his eyes in my life“

Observe how Lin Manuel Miranda plays with the vowel sound “I” throughout the excerpt. The assonance creates a memorable rhythm, and it also elevates the song with extra meaning. An “I” sounds like a sharp cry of internal anguish, and it’s only used by Angelica, the one with unrequited love. The absence of the “I” is just as impactful. When Alexander Hamilton speaks, the “I” is nowhere to be found because he’s not the one in anguish. The expert use of assonance, and the lack of it, creates rhythm, mood, and deep emotion.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas’s famous poem about death is a real earworm—you hear it once and it sticks with you forever. Thomas clusters different vowels together to create a memorable rhythm, while also conveying abstract thoughts and emotion. Take a look at this excerpt from Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

First, he pairs “go” and “old” together, not as a rhyme, but close enough to play off each other. Right from the start, these word choices set a slow rhythm and the reader’s mind floods with the emotions they associate with that long “O” sound: words like “slow,” “echo,” and of course “old” and “go.” All these words carry a weight and fading quality with them, which make them great choices when musing about death.

Next, he uses the long “A” sound with “rave,” “day,” and “rage.” These are active, lively words—your mouth even uses a lot of muscles to utter this sound. Especially when succeeding the “O” sounds, these “a” sounds act as a burst of energy, one last burst of energy a person might feel as they struggle to hold onto life.

Finally, he works in the sharp “I” sound with “dying” and “light.” These words sound like a final cry out before death.

The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop was a master of description—and a master of assonance too. In her allegorical poem The Fish, she goes into hypnotic detail while describing the speaker catching a big fish with five hooks in its mouth from past fishermen it expertly escaped. See how Bishop uses assonance with the short “i” sound in this excerpt:

“I admired his sullen face,
mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.”

A short “i” sound is like a short breath. As you read the piece, you can almost hear the old fish gasping for breath as time runs out. This assonance creates the hypnotic rhythm Elizabeth Bishop is known for, as well as suspense for this specific story. With assonance at work, the reader senses time is running out, empathizes with the fish, and wonders if the speaker ultimately kill the fish or let it go.

Play with assonance in your own writing

Now you’ve grown an understanding of what assonance is and how it elevates a writing piece. Next time you sit down to write, play with vowel sounds, and see what literary magic you can create!