Metaphor
Metaphor is frequently used in literature, especially in poetry, where with few words, emotions and associations from one subject are associated with a different subject.
At its most basic, metaphor is one thing standing for another.
Art: Abstract - Red Rose
New Table of Contents
- Metaphor Types
- Incendiary
- Examples of Metaphors
- Practice Making Metaphors
- Fog
- Metaphor Quotes
- Movies as Metaphors
- Thinking Metaphorically 1
- More on Metaphors
- Metaphor Book Shelf
- Thinking Metaphorically 2
- The Glass and the Bowl
- Metaphoric Relatives
- Comments Are Welcome
- Bookmark for Metaphor
- Mending Wall
Metaphor Types
Good things come in threes!
- The DESCRIPTIVE METAPHOR speaks of something concrete by referring to something else concrete. Take for example: His face was a rusted out car with parts missing.
- The ABSTRACT METAPHOR explains an idea or concept by comparing it to something more concrete. For example: My cup runneth over.
- The EMBEDDED METAPHOR uses a verb or a noun in a non-literal fashion. For example: The storm barged into the town and bullied its way through.
Metaphor can be
the connecting of two nouns
by comparing one noun
to the other.
Example:
Tom is a many faceted diamond
Incendiary
by Vernon Scannell
That one small boy with a face like pallid cheeseAnd burnt-out little eyes could make a blaze
As brazen, fierce and huge, as red and gold
And zany yellow as the one that spoiled
Three thousand guineas' worth of property
And crops at Godwin's Farm on Saturday
Is frightening---as fact and metaphor:
An ordinary match intended for
The lighting of a pipe or kitchen fire
Misused may set a whole menagerie
Of flame-fanged tigers roaring hungrily.
And frightening, too, that one small boy should set
The sky on fire and choke the stars to heat
Such skinny limbs and such a little heart
Which would have been content with one warm kiss
Had there been anyone to offer this.
Examples of Metaphors
- "The rain came down in long knitting needles."
~ Enid Bagnold ~
from National Velvet - "Between the lower east side tenements the sky is a snotty handkerchief."
~ Marge Piercy ~
from The Butt of Winter - "All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances"
~ William Shakespeare ~ - "He wore me down"
"I'm dead tired"
"She's the apple of my eye"
"I'm heartbroken"
"Strong as an ox"
~ everyone ~ - "Life's a journey not a destination
And I just can't tell just what tomorrow brings."
~ Aerosmith ~ - "Love is a homeless guy searching for treasure in the middle of the rain and finding a bag of gold coins and slowly finding out they're all filled with chocolate and even though he's heart broken, he can't complain because he was hungry in the first place."
~ Bo Burnham ~
"Love Is" - "Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food."
~ Austin O'Malley ~
Practice Making Metaphors
its fun!
For example:
1. the brain's amygdala >>> pit in a peach
2. backyard swimming pool >>> lake of the fairies
3. Mocha Joe (my cat) >>> old soul with fur
4. going to work >>> jumping down a rabbit hole
Metaphors make it easier to think about
or understand something
Fog
by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
In Greek, metaphor meant
"to carry something across"
or "transfer"
Metaphor Quotes
I heard my name associated with the Peter Pan syndrome more than once. But really, what's so wrong with Peter Pan? Peter Pan flies. He is a metaphor for dreams and faith.
~ Mark Burnett ~
God is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
~ Joseph Campbell ~
A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.
~Norman Cousins ~
I'm not interested in a film about golf but I am interested in golf as a metaphor.
~ Robert Redford ~
In this metaphor we actually have a picture of the computational universe, a metaphor which I hope to make scientifically precise as part of a research program.
~ Seth Lloyd ~
If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
~ Octavio Paz ~
We didn't have metaphors in my day. We didn't beat about the bush.
~ Trueman, Fred ~ (Frederick Sewards)
The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.
~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset ~
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
~ Orson Scott Card ~
Movies as Metaphors
just a few . . .
American Beauty (Widescreen Edition)
This is, as the title suggests, a film about beauty, about seeing the inner beauty of other people, indeed seeing beauty in everything. As two characters tell us, there is so much beauty that sometimes our hearts feel like they are going to burst. The richness of the ideas here, however, go much deeper than this.
Amazon Price: $12.49 (as of 12/22/2009) 
Insomnia (Widescreen Edition)
When Will Dormer (Al Pacino) goes through the floor of the fishing cabin, into the water, into the tunnels, he enters a world where things are turned upside down. Like Alice, he goes through the looking-glass.
We all have stories we would rather not tell, and like her, we should not presume to judge those whose stories we do happen to hear, because no one is innocent in this inverted world. We all are living in the looking-glass, not only in the world out there, but also inside our hearts as well.
Amazon Price: $5.79 (as of 12/22/2009)
The Red Violin (Remastered) (Meridian Collection)
Love pervades all of the relationships between owners and the violin throughout its history.
Here we have the possibility of rebirth. Another father giving the violin to their child just as the violin maker gave it to his. Rebirth, as real as the rebirth of the instrument in the hands of the restorer. The cycle begins again.
Amazon Price: $19.99 (as of 12/22/2009)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
This love story wrapped in the kung-fu genre hides within it a story about societal obligations and the penalties which are extracted when those obligations are not fulfilled.
. . . the same as all of our own deaths to our selfish, youthful selves, and our birth to maturity, when we take our place in society as citizens fulfilling our proper roles in the world.
Amazon Price: $8.49 (as of 12/22/2009)
Memento
What is really being revealed in the movie Memento is that all of us create fictions, that all us have the same disease Leonard has, just to a different degree.
All of our memories are flawed, all of our truths are half-truths, partial truths, chock full of lies. All of our visions of the world are just our dreams of reality, our views of what is, all different, and even though the world is still there when we close our eyes, it is not the same world for any of us.
Amazon Price: $12.49 (as of 12/22/2009)
Thinking Metaphorically 1
an intuitive way . . .
1. Think of something/someone you want to describe.
2. Relax, tell "the universe" you need a metaphor, let you mind wander. (patience!)
3. What words, sound or images come to you.
4. Use the words, sound or images as a comparison to what you are describing.
Example:
1. I want to describe what "type A" Tom is like to someone else.
2. Relax . . . I need a metaphor . . . Tom . . . wander wander wander . . .
3. Music called Flight of the Bumblebee comes to mind.
4. Tom is an erratic bee that never lands on one flower very long.
More on Metaphors
- Metaphor and Mediation
- Using metaphor for communication during mediation
- Music as Metaphor
- This site seeks to present my passion for music while sharing my knowledge of it. It also provides a forum for thought where music intersects with other disciplines.
- Cybersapce is a Parallel World
- www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/metaphor.html
- The Metaphor Project
- To succeed, we must present our ideas about peace, justice, and a healthy, sustainable environment as part of the best American dream-- a fair, just, and prosperous nation that does the right thing at home and abroad.
Good metaphors open our mind to new ways
of thinking about something.
Metaphor Book Shelf
Science is all metaphor.
~ Timothy Francis Leary ~
Thinking Metaphorically 2
finding qualities . . .
2. What words would describe the storm if it were a person, or something else?
3. Bully, enraged, tantrum, charging bull, explosion, whirling dervish, intruder, etc.
4. Use the words in #3 to describe the storm (without using like, or as, of course).
Examples:
1. The sudden storm bullied its way into town and threw a tantrum.
2. There was an explosion of sound and enraged winds screamed through the city.
3. A herd of dark clouds charged from the north, followed by trampling winds.
The Glass and the Bowl
by Louise Erdrich
The father pours the milk from his glassinto the cup of the child,
and as the child drinks
the whiteness, opening
her throat to the good taste
eagerly, the father is filled.
He closes the refrigerator
on its light, he walks out
under the bowl of frozen darkness
and nothing seems withheld from him.
Overhead, the burst ropes of stars,
the buckets of craters,
the chaos of heaven, absence
of refuge in the design.
Yet down here, his daughter
in her quilts, under patterns
of diamonds and novas,
full of rich milk,
sleeping.
Metaphoric Relatives
i.e., other figures of speech
- SIMILE: A simile is a type of metaphor that shows something is similar to something else by using the words "like" or "as." For example: In her manner and movements she looked like like a rabbit.
- HYPERBOLE: A hyperbole is an exaggeration so big, no one could possible take it literally. For example: It was so hot outside, out skin was drippin' off us.
- UNDERSTATEMENT: An understatement expresses something by under-emphasizing the extent to which something might be true.It is the opposite of hyperbole and frequently used for its comedic value. For example: Joan had been lost in the woods for 3 days. When found the park ranger asked if she wanted to eat something. Joan says, "Maybe a carrot or two."
- IRONY: Irony is something meaning the opposite of what it literally means. For example: You locked your car keys in the car with the motor running and shout, "This is my lucky day."
- SYNECDOCHE: Synecdoche is where part of something represents the whole thing. For example: Man does not live by bread alone. Another example is: All hands on deck!
- METONYMY: In metonymy some quality or attribute of what's being described is used to indicate the whole. For example, when referring to royalty people often use the word "crown."
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Bookmark for Metaphor
LINKS TO ARTWORK/ESSAYS USED ABOVE
- False Mirror
- at Photobucket
- Surreal World
- at Photobucket
- Movie Metaphor Essays
- Amazon movie descriptions are by David Heuser
Mending Wall
by Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
by jaktraks
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