Repetition and Anaphora Examples in Short Stories: 6 Phrases That Return
Quick answer: Repetition and anaphora examples from Poe, Crane, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Melville and Kipling, showing how a returning phrase builds rhythm, dread or comedy in short fiction.
Repetition is the deliberate return of a word, phrase or sentence; anaphora is the special case where successive sentences or clauses begin with the same words. Both work on the ear before the mind. A phrase said once is information; said three times it is rhythm, and rhythm is how prose carries feeling that it does not state. In a short story the repeated phrase often becomes the piece's spine.
Six phrases that return
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe accelerates towards its ending by repeating the word louder as the imagined heartbeat grows, and by having the narrator insist again and again that the officers must have heard it. The repetition is the narrator's pulse. The sentences shorten, the words return faster, and the confession bursts out of the rhythm.
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane gives the correspondent a refrain that begins each time with the same complaint to the seven mad gods who rule the sea, protesting that he was allowed to come this far only to drown. It appears three times with variations. Crane uses it as a bell, marking the men's hope rising and falling through the night.
Misery by Anton Chekhov repeats Iona's attempt to speak: to the officer, to the three young men, to the house porter, to the young cabman, each time beginning with the fact that his son died this week. The repetition is structural, a man trying the same door four times, and the last attempt, to his horse, completes the pattern.
The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy has three old men on an island whose only prayer is a single sentence, Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us. The bishop teaches them the Lord's Prayer; they forget it; they run across the water after his ship to ask again. The repeated sentence is the whole argument about what prayer is for.
Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville gives its clerk one answer, that he would prefer not to, delivered in reply to every request until the phrase infects the office and the narrator finds himself using the word prefer. Melville repeats it so often that the reader begins to dread it, and then to hear it as a kind of dignity.
The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling runs on refrains: the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River set about with fever trees, the phrase O Best Beloved, the elephant's satiable curtiosity. Each return is a beat the listening child waits for, and the story is built to be read aloud.
How to use it in your own story
A repeated phrase must change in meaning across its returns even when its words do not. The reader should hear something different the third time because the story has moved.
Common mistakes
Accidental repetition is the commonest fault, the same adjective three times in a paragraph because the writer was not listening. Deliberate repetition fails when the phrase does not change weight, so the return feels like a stuck record. A third fault is over-extension, a refrain used so often it becomes a tic the reader skips. Writory's story judges reading for Language and Craft can hear the difference between a refrain and an echo within a page.
Where readers meet it today
Modern stories that repeat with control include Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Sandra Cisneros's Eleven, Jamaica Kincaid's Girl, Lydia Davis's Break It Down and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five with its recurring shrug.
What writers can take from this
- Short phrase, few words.
- Uneven spacing; avoid the metronome.
- Same words, changed situation.
- Break the anaphora on the sentence you want remembered.
- Read aloud and cut every repetition you did not intend.
Try it yourself
Write a 500-word story in which one sentence of no more than six words appears exactly five times, spoken by different characters. Its meaning must be different at every appearance and the story must end on it.
Questions
What is an example of anaphora in a short story?
Stephen Crane's The Open Boat gives the correspondent a refrain that begins each time with the same address to the seven mad gods who rule the sea. It returns three times as hope rises and falls.
How do you identify repetition as a device?
Look for a word, phrase or structure that returns at intervals, and check whether the situation around it has changed. If the return lands differently each time, the repetition is deliberate; if it lands the same, it is either a tic or an accident.
What is the difference between repetition and a motif?
A motif is a recurring element of any kind, an object or image or sound. Repetition is specifically the return of words. A repeated phrase can become a motif, as Bartleby's answer does.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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