Metaphor

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Metaphor

A metaphor is the concept of using a known thing to understand an unknown thing by comparison.It has an underlying meaning that is not plainly apparent or plainly described. It is used to interpret things differently and give the listener or viewer a creative vision on how two things are alike.The objective of the metaphor is to seek two unlike things and somehow bring them together to show how they can have a certain type of idea, feeling, or feature in common.

Metaphors can sometimes be mistaken for a simile but to avoid that mistake,similes use the words "like" or "as" when they're explaining something and metaphors don't. For instance,"He is like a beast."That would be classified as a simile being that the fact that it uses the word "like", now if it was a metaphor it would have just been written as "He is a beast," instead of "He is like a beast."

There are many kind of metaphors, such as simile, personification, anthropomorphism, hyperbole, parable, fable, animism, analogy and many more. Personification is having the right to give human traits, such as the qualities, feelings, actions, or characteristics of a person to a non-living object, such as things, colors, qualities, or ideas. For example, "The moon smiled at me."The verb, smiled, is a human action. While the moon is a non-living object. Anthropomorphism is similar to personification in such that is the attribution of human characteristics to animals or non-living things, phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts. Examples of these attributions include animals, plants, and nature forces such as wind, rain, or the sun depicted as creatures with human motivations and/or abilities to reason and converse. Anthropomorphism is strongly associated with art and storytelling.

Animism is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans but also in animals, plants,rocks, as well as natural phenomena. Animism has its own charm and occurs frequently in children's stories and fairy tales. A familiar example is the scarecrow who comes to life in the Wizard of Oz.

The term Animism is derived from the Latin word "anima" meaning breath or soul. From its early beginnings it was a belief that the soul or spirit lived in every object , even if was inanimate.

Analogy is the comparison of two pairs which have the same relationship. The key is to ascertain the relationship with the first pair and connect it with the second pair. Example, hot is to cold, as fire is to ice.

Now a fable is usually a short representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic or pictorial form.

A fable is commonly known to be a fictional narrative meant to teach a moral lesson and the characters in the fable are most likely to be animals whose words and actions reflect human behavior.

An example of a fable is the race with the turtle and the rabbit, the rabbit was way faster than the turtle and he knew that so down the line of the race he decided to take a nap, figuring by the time he awoke the turtle would still be behind but surely enough the turtle had passed the rabbit because the rabbit was being cocky believing that the slow turtle would never beat him and the moral of the story was "slow and steady wins the race."

A parable means something similar to a fable and is also a short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle.

A hyperbole is any rhetorical device or figure of speech that employs exaggeration. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally. It is used to to create emphasis or effect.

An example of a hyperbole: "The bag weighed a ton." Pointing out that the bag was heavy doesn't necessarily mean that it actually weighed a ton.

All of these literary devices are commonly, and constantly used in historical and popular poems and work on many levels in poetry and help provide depth and inner complexity to the poem.

One significant poem is "The Forces That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower", by Dylan Thomas. This poem describes the cycle of life and death, noting that creation and destruction are part of the same process, both for man and nature. The first stanza states the main metaphor of the poem which is"The force that drives the green fuse drives the flower". The three main words that pop out to me are force, fuse, and drive. Force portrays the power of creation and destruction that both surround man and nature. Fuse is like the energy and growth of the plant and as a plant it starts out as a stem and grows into a strong standing flower, so for humans our fuse would be the growth of our body, intelligence, with the help of the blood that flows through our bodies. Nature and humans are compared with the power of fuse because they both grow and develop. In the poem the speaker emphasizes the power that causes growth in nature and is revealed as the same force that causes the his self to grow. In the next line Dylan Thomas writes "Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer." Thomas makes it clear that the fuse which blasted the flower in existence is also the blast that destroys it. The same fuse that brought him into existence will as well be the same fuse to die out and destroy him. So like nature, the speaker is also subject to the same fate. Although there are many metaphors used in this poem the central metaphor is quite clever because it makes a powerful stand and can be seen to be difficult to interpret that's why it is different and unique but at the same token, when understood it defines the endless cycle of life and death and is made apparent in the first lines:"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/drives my green age. With that said, this is the most powerful metaphor used in the poem and as the title of this poem.

In Robert Herrick's poem,"You Are A Tulip", he uses a few metaphors to describe a woman's beauty,comparing her to flowers instead of directly saying she's beautiful but at the same time, telling her,soon she will grow old and miserable or that she is very pretty but will become ugly and perhaps,miserable,soon. In the first line he states, "You are a Tulip seen to-day", and to the eye,a tulip is seen to be soft, delicate and pretty revealing its glow in the day time,referring to the girl as a beautiful women illuminating her beauty in the day. Then he goes on to say,"You are a lovely July-flower, describing her as the flowers in the summer that are fully grown and pretty but at the same time if not now, a natural phase will come in take her shine away just like a flower when it grows old, and he makes that clear in the next line when he says "Yet one rude wind,or ruffling shower,Will force you hence, and in an hour." So just like a flower she will get damaged like one in a rough rain shower. The main strategy Robert Herrick used was the comparison of her to a flower, he didn't have to say she was beautiful or that one day she will not be or look the same ,he used metaphors to describe her beauty and her farewell of it, just like a flower would be portrayed.

Emily Dickinson's poem "Hope is the Thing with Feathers", is an interesting one because it uses an abstract idea, to create a visual image which is the technique of personification. For instance, hope is the thing with feathers, gives hope the body of a bird, free spirited. Hope is considered a "thing" because it is a feeling and that feeling is portrayed to be like a bird.She brings an image to the mind, of the word "hope" being able to fly and achieve its destination. When you hope for something that means you want it to happen and be delivered to whatever your desire is. That's how Emily Dickinson brings hope to life and gives it the ability to fly because like a bird it travels and flies hoping for something better or hoping it doesn't meet anything to put it in danger and when you hope,you hope nothing comes in its way that could mess up its possible arrival to something better. If she were to rephrase it differently like, hope is the thing with broken feathers than it would have been the other way around and hope would have been something that didn't have a chance at opportunity because if you think about it,broken feathers are the things that keep you grounded.

Keep in mind that people usually hope the most when things are scarce, or just not working out or when something is wrong, that's why Emily Dickinson goes on to say hope is sweet on the stormiest day.