Answering Echo

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O who will show me those delights on high? Echo. I. Thou Echo, thou art mortal, all men know. Echo. No. —George Herbert (1593-1633), "Heaven"

Echoes can be fun in real life. You shout into a cave, and hear the sound back. This happens due to sound waves bouncing off solid objects.

In fiction, echoes are not just there to demonstrate the power of sound. Someone asks a question. A voice answers—but not in its own words, just repeating the last few words of the first person's question. This is the Answering Echo.

Sometimes in musicals this can be played for dramatic effect. It can also be used to set atmosphere or tone in a scene.

Examples of Answering Echo include:

Film

• The My Little Pony movie had a song done entirely like this between Baby Lickety Split, who was bemoaning her troubles at a well, and Flutter Pony Morning Glory, who was trapped inside.

No one's in a fix like I am (I am) No one has the luck I do (I do) No one's had the set backs I have (I have) Look where life has led me to (Me too!)

• Played with in Frozen II, with the mysterious voice that Elsa hears throughout the movie, particularly during the song "Into The Unknown". She hears it before saying anything, but it does seem to respond when she begins to call out to the world at large.

Literature

• Echos from the Boogiepop novel can only communicate like this.
• In the Serendipity Books series of children's picture books, there's a story of a short-tempered baby elephant who mistakes echoes for a person and gets in a pointless argument with them.^[context?]

Music

• The aria "Treues Echo dieser Orten" from J.S. Bach's secular cantata Hercules auf dem Scheidewege. Much of the music of this cantata, including this aria, was adapted into the fourth part of the Christmas Oratorio.^[context?]

Mythology

• Trope Namer and Ur Example (Older Than Feudalism): the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, told by the Roman writer Ovid.

Theatre

• The Inquisition in Bernstein's Candide delivers its judgments this way.

Three Inquisitors: Are our methods legal or illegal? Basses: Legal! Three Inquisitors: Are we judges of the law, or laymen? Basses: Amen. Three Inquisitors: Shall we hang them or forget them? Basses: Get them!

• In The Golden Apple, after Ulysses has lost all of his friends, he questions himself about love, faith, hope and dreams. Mother Hare and the chorus echo his words as somewhere in space they hang suspended.

Western Animation

• In Steven Universe: The Movie, Amethyst starts doing this after {{{1}}}.