1. What is it?

Consonance is the repeating of consonant sounds throughout a sentence or phrase.
Assonance is the repeating of vowel sounds throughout a sentence or phrase.

Unlike alliteration or rhyme, consonance and assonance do not have to happen at the beginning or end of a word. They can occur anywhere in a word.

It is often used in poetry, rap, and prose in which rhythm and style are important.

2. Why use it?

3. Examples

The pitter-patter of rain could be heard against the window. The drops rolled down, each a relief from the stressful summer.

The text read: You’re doing the right thing.
“She believes me”, he thought. “She believes me, and if she could see me at this moment she could even learn to love me.” And so he placed the phone back in his pocket, the rainwater sharp against his skin, the text still fresh in his brain, and continued to plant the roses alongside Melissa’s mother’s grave.

4. Examples in literature

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Excerpt from Chapter 9:

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce

Excerpt from Chapter IV:

As he descended the steps the impression which effaced his troubled selfcommunion was that of a mirthless mask reflecting a sunken day from the threshold of the college. The shadow, then, of the life of the college passed gravely over his consciousness. It was a grave and ordered and passionless life that awaited him, a life without material cares. He wondered how he would pass the first night in the novitiate and with what dismay he would wake the first morning in the dormitory. The troubling odour of the long corridors of Clongowes came back to him and he heard the discreet murmur of the burning gasflames. At once from every part of his being unrest began to irradiate. A feverish quickening of his pulses followed and a din of meaningless words drove his reasoned thoughts hither and thither confusedly. His lungs dilated and sank as if he were inhaling a warm moist unsustaining air and he smelt again the warm moist air which hung in the bath in Clongowes above the sluggish turfcoloured water.

5. Tasks

Task 1: Write a sentence that uses consonance, and a sentence that uses assonance.
Task 2: Write a descriptive scene in which consonance and assonance both feature prominently.