Apostrophe
A direct address to an absent person, an abstract idea, or a thing that cannot answer.
In this rhetorical sense, apostrophe breaks off to speak to death, a nation, love, or an absent lover as though they were present and listening. Writers use it to heighten emotion and to make abstractions feel vividly personal. It often signals a surge of feeling too large for ordinary statement.
Example
The speaker addresses Death itself as a defeated foe, an apostrophe that turns dread into open defiance.
Holy Sonnet 10 (“Death, be not proud”) · John Donne
See it in action
Analyses on StoryBites that use apostrophe: