Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
The anaphora gives the language a battering quality that again matches the underlying meaning.
Anaphora of this kind also can create a comprehensive sound, as when the speaker wishes to create a sense that all possibilities are covered (or all things but one):
But madmen never meet. It is the only thing they cannot do. They can talk, they can inspire, they can fight, they can found religions; but they cannot meet.
Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men (1912)
He’s too delightful. If he’ll only not spoil it! But they always will; they always do; they always have.
James, The Ambassadors (1903)
They always do, by itself, captures about the same literal meaning as the longer enumeration of past, present, and future; but the anaphora gives the result an exhaustive feel to go with the exhaustive substance.
2. Repetition of the subject with different complements, as when applying several modifiers to the same person or thing. Repeating the subject and verb gives each claim its own emphasis:
Every man sees that he is that middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant.
Emerson, Spiritual Laws (1841)
The anaphora enables Emerson to independently affirm each statement and set it vividly against its contrary. The parallel nature of the claims is strengthened both by the repetition at the start (he is . . . he is) and by the omission of any conjunction at the end – a use of asyndeton, which has its own chapter later.
Here is a fine case of the same construction turned to the purpose of negation:
I certainly should dread more from a wild-cat in my bedchamber than from all the lions that roar in the deserts behind Algiers. But in this parallel it is the cat that is at a distance, and the lions and tigers that are in our antechambers and our lobbies. Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our neighbor; Algiers is not infectious.
Burke, Letter on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France (1796)
Anaphora also can heighten the contrast between affirmative and negative constructions when they are mixed:
Why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who are their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are benevolent, you are well informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage.
Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades (1905)
Here is the same general idea, though without the explicit negative at the end:
I shall lay this siege in form, Elvira; I am angry; I am indignant; I am truculently inclined; but I thank my Maker I have still a sense of fun.
Stevenson, New Arabian Nights (1882)
The regularity of the anaphora at the start creates a stronger contrast at the end – not with a negative claim, but with an affirmative one that is different in tone from what has come before. The substance and the structure of the sentence both change direction.
3. Repetition of the subject and verb with different objects, or phrases doing similar work.
They wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr. Jarndyce had – or had not.
Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
And now let me tell you we know all about the cheque – Soames’s cheque. We know where you got it. We know who stole it. We know how it came to the person who gave it to you. It’s all very well talking, but when you’re in trouble always go to a lawyer.
Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
In both cases repeating the subject and verb gives them a prominence they would lack if they appeared only at the start. Thus about the same substantive impression might be created in the second passage by listing the items serially (we know where you got it, who stole it, and how it came. . .), but repeating the subject and verb leaves we know ringing in the ears; it lays stress not just on the things known but on who knows them.
I can not forgive that judge upon the bench, or that governor in the chair of state, who has lightly passed over such offenses. I can not forgive the public, in whose opinion the duelist finds a sanctuary. I can not forgive you, my brethren, who till this late hour have been silent while successive murders were committed.
Nott, sermon at Albany (1804)
The anaphora makes each sentence a distinct pointing of the finger. The speaker points outward twice, then the hand turns toward the listener. The construction is used similarly here:
I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the ironed leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted. . . .
Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)
In both of these last cases, the listener gets involved in the repetition of subject and verb and perhaps isn’t very struck by the objects to which they are attached – until the object is changed in a surprising way at the end of the last round.
4. Changes in modifying language. Various combinations of the elements so far considered – subject, verb, and complement – may be repeated, with changes just in the modifying words that follow them.
He was goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed to-day. He has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he can’t stand it.
Dickens, Hard Times (1854)
The principal uses of this construction are the same as those seen under our other recent headings. It can, as in the case just shown, make a condition sound pervasive or constant. Instead or in addition, the device can be used to set up a contrast between the early elements and an unexpected climax:
Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT.
Johnson, in Boswell’s Life (1791)
The first sentence uses anaphora in the same way the previous passage from Dickens did: to drive home how relentlessly dull the subject was. But it also prepares the ear for the pleasure of the surprise ending.
Those are straightforward cases where identical statements are followed by modifiers that just change the time or place of their occurrence (last night, the night before last, today; or in company, in his closet, everywhere). But the same sort of construction can be used to enlarge on a theme in more elaborate ways.
They have bought their knowledge, they have bought it dear, they have bought it at our expense, but at any rate let us be duly thankful that they now at last possess it.
Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1936)
And when this new principle – this new proposition that no human being ever thought of three years ago – is brought forward, I combat it as having an evil tendency, if not an evil design. I combat it as having a tendency to dehumanize the negro, to take away from him the right of ever striving to be a man. I combat it as being one of the thousand things constantly done in these days to prepare the public mind to make property, and nothing but property, of the negro in all the States of this Union.
Lincoln, debate with Stephen Douglas at Alton (1858)
This time the stem (I combat it) is short compared to the various elaborations attached to it. Repeating the stem helps prevent the action in the sentence from being lost in the long explanation of its rationale. The speaker’s basic position becomes a kind of refrain.
A case of this sort of anaphora from scripture: