1. To emphasize and enhance rhythm: Parallelism creates a pleasing rhythm in writing, making the text more memorable and impactful. The repetition of grammatical structures creates a sense of balance and flow, making the ideas more accessible to the reader.
2. To highlight key ideas: Parallelism draws attention to certain ideas by placing them in similar grammatical structures. This makes the ideas more prominent and strengthens their impact.
3. To create balance and clarity: By presenting ideas in a parallel structure, writers achieve a sense of balance and symmetry, making their arguments more logical and comprehensible.
4. To create a sense of unity: Parallelism can help to unify different parts of a text by showing how they relate to each other. This can be especially helpful in creating a strong argument or in weaving together different themes.
5. To add emotional impact: Parallelism can be used to create a powerful emotional effect, especially when paired with strong imagery or figurative language. It can amplify feelings of excitement, sorrow, or determination, depending on the context.
Example:
From Walden by Henry David Thoreau:
> "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Here, the parallel structure of "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach" emphasizes Thoreau's purpose for living in the woods. The repetition of "to" creates a rhythm, while the balanced structure of the phrases makes the argument more logical and impactful.
Overall, parallelism is a powerful tool that Emerson and Thoreau used extensively to enhance their writing and make their ideas more memorable and impactful.