In this lesson,
you'll learn that using metaphors and other figures of speech can
sometimes greatly improve your style.
What's a Metaphor,
Anyway?
As we say in
Lesson 3 Word Choice, all words are
sound-symbols for feelings, objects, and ideas. In this sense, all
words are metaphors--are comparisons implying that one thing--the
sounds produced when we say s, n, o, and w
together and in that order--are like and can be said to
represent another thing--in this case, the substance "snow."
A more practical
definition would suggest that metaphors are direct comparisons--they
suggest a similarity between unlike things. Metaphors are commonly
used in speech and are almost always understood. When we speak of
the "eye of the stove," we are not saying that stove burners can see,
but that they resemble human eyes. This comparison helps us visualize
the stove--it helps make the abstract picture more concrete. Metaphors
enliven most prose and are indispensable in the writing of poetry
and other creative writing. Again, your use of metaphorical language
will depend on your audience and purpose. In personal essays, metaphors
and other figures of speech can help writers express complex feelings
and thoughts. (Similes are another example of a "figure of
speech" and represent less obvious, or overt, comparisons, since they
use "like" or "as" to connect the two things being compared.) Without
metaphors, language is often uninteresting and unclear.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's
"The Crack Up" begins this way:
Of course all
life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic
side of the work--the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come,
from outside--the ones you remember and blame things on and, in
moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect
all at once.
Fitzgerald has
used several comparisons in the first sentence of this essay. He says
that a person's life is like something that "breaks down"--this is
an indirect comparison, since Fitzgerald is not saying that life is
like a house whose paint keeps falling off, but like all things that
break down. Then, with the use of the word "blow," Fitzgerald is comparing
living to boxing or to the physical sensation of being hit. The comparisons
in this sentence help us understand the complex feeling Fitzgerald
is trying to express. Without them, the idea of "cracking" would be
too abstract to understand.
In "Such, Such
Were the Joys," George Orwell describes one of his schoolmates as
"a wretched little creature, almost an albino, peering upwards out
of weak eyes, with a long nose at the end of which a dewdrop always
seemed to be trembling." In this descriptive sentence, Orwell is overtly
comparing the child's nose to a melting icicle. The effect is that
we can picture the child's nose easily.
Using Adjectives
Rather Than Metaphors To Describe
Often, when we
first begin writing, we will use adjectives to describe. We'll say
that a girl is beautiful and that a friend is reliable. But because
these adjectives do not show us what the girl looks like or
what makes the friend reliable, they tell far more than they show.
If we made a comparison instead, we would not only come closer to
expressing our meaning--we would also begin to verge on the very elements
that make writing forceful and memorable.
A conceit,
which can either be a metaphor or a simile, compares two things that
are not alike at all. Such comparisons can be very useful in
the writing of satires, or when a writer wants to achieve a highly
ironic tone. In "Learning to Eat Soup," Edward Hoagland says that
"very old people age somewhat as bananas do." Although there is not
much of an actual connection between old people and bananas, this
conceit works because it turns the process of aging into an image
we can easily visualize.
Analogies
are also metaphorical: they are comparisons. In general, though, analogies
are more extended than metaphors--they make initial comparisons between
two feelings or ideas and then maintain that comparison throughout
the duration of a text. An example of an analogy is comparing the
college experience to life in general. The first year of college might
be described as the infancy years, when one doesn't know anything
about living and has to learn, as a new college student has to learn
about living on a campus and in a dorm, as well as how to study and
to survive exam weeks. The second year of college, or sophomore year
(which literally means "wise fool"), can be described as the teen
aged years when a student feels like she finally is wise in the ways
of both the subject matter she's studying and living at school, but
actually she has a lot to learn like the adolescent who tries on new
political ideas and religious beliefs. The analogy can be extended
throughout the junior level, as a time of young adulthood and trying
on several different types of jobs, and throughout the senior level,
as a time of slightly older adulthood where the person settles into
a lifestyle (subject area) and "graduates" from the earlier stages
with some sense of having learned enough to live well.
Metaphorical
Faults: Clichés and Mixed Metaphors
Clichés, mixed
metaphors, and similes that are obscure and confusing will dilute
the power of your writing. Clichés (or dead metaphors) are comparisons
that have lost their meaning from too much use. Although we use clichés
in speech all the time, we should work hard to avoid them in our writing,
since they undermine sincerity. That is, clichés produce a tone that
communicates a writer's lack of interest in his subject and his audience.
Mixed metaphors compare too many unalike things at once and thus fail
to do what metaphors should do, which is to clarify and amplify meaning.
We might say, for instance, that a room is a train wreck. This simile
works because it suggests that one thing (a room) is like another
thing (a train wreck.) Even though rooms aren't really like train
wrecks, the comparison implies a similarity that seems accurate, since
we do know that rooms can have the lack of order inherent to train
wrecks. If we said, however, that a room is like a train wreck with
apple pies sitting all over it, we would be making a comparison that
does not make sense, since we would be implying that a room is like
a train wreck, which is somehow like a bakery.
Exercise
Rewrite
the following sentences using clichéd expressions into sentences using
more original language.
My heart is
broken.
I have never known such a lame duck.
I was frightened to death.
Our society today has been blessed with many freedoms.
Summary
All language
is inherently metaphorical. That is, every word we use is not the
thing itself, but sound-symbols for the thing itself. Metaphors and
other figures can be very useful to writers, since they can clarify
and amplify meaning, thus making an abstract activity--reading--more
concrete and understandable.
