Antithesis - why opposites attract

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They say opposites attract.

And to attract people to your way of thinking, try incorporating some opposites into your writing - or, as the ancients called it, ‘antithesis’.
The word ‘antithesis’ comes from the Greek words ‘anti’ meaning ‘against’. And ‘thesis’ meaning position.

And with antithesis, you simply set up two contrasting ideas.

Here’s a great example from Queen Elizabeth the first’s famous rousing speech to her troops at Tilbury on the south coast of England.

“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.” - Queen Elizabeth I

The speech inspired one of the greatest military victories in English history - with the troops successfully defending the country from invasion by the spanish armada.
Antithesis isn’t just simply about presenting two opposites. For it to work best, the the two contrasts should be grammatically and syntactically parallel.

Let’s take a look at some more examples to show you what I mean.
Here’s an example from that great orator Martin Luther King.

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” - Martin Luther King

As you can see, there is a very clear parallelism between ‘live together as brothers’ or ‘perish together as fools’.

The whole thing would be much less powerful without that parallelism. For example, if, instead, he’d said:

"We must learn to live together as brothers because if we don’t we will all be fools who perish in unison.”

It’s much less memorable and the whole thing falls flat.

A great example of extended antithesis is the opening to A Tale of Two Cities, where Charles Dickens sets out a series of contrasting ideas:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..." (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

Notice how every pairing has a parallel structure - the best of times/the worst of times; the age of wisdom/the age of foolishness; the epoch of belief/the epoch of incredulity and so on.

Until that final pairing, where Dickens provides an unexpected twist. Instead of contrasting pairing Heaven with Hell as we’ve been led to expect, he ditches the overt parallelism for ‘the other way’, as though the word hell is too unmentionable a thing to include in his famous list.

And, finally, another example of antithesis from more recent times:

The Friends of the Earth Strapline, ‘think globally, act locally’.

The famous ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that antithesis makes it easier for your audience to understand your argument.

He said that putting contrary ideas side by side makes it clearer for your reader to choose the correct option.

Try it out for yourself!