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He is married, he visits a woman he had an affair with, that means driving on a red clay road, and she isn't there. When he gets back to town, we read we read about him seeing "the red clay that rimmed my tires like lipstick."
And that's visual. But there's also a second metaphor -- the lipstick on the husband that gives away he is having an affair.
He is trying to open his dead fathers safe, and he can't. "Then I beat on it with my fists. I hit hard. I tore skin. It was that much like my father -- hidden, silent, and unbreakable."
So that describes his father -- the metaphor is clearly stated. But is there also a second message -- just as he wanted to open the safe, he wanted to understand his father.
What say ye? Obvious technique? But I don't think I'm good enough to do it. Accident? But the author (Hart, The King of Lies) does other amazing things with metaphors.
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Metaphoric language and irony are in play for the examples cited, and multiple entendre. Irony's reconciled congruent opposites is the larger consideration; metaphor, allusive referents, actually, is the vehicle that intimates an irony's concrete and abstract objective correlative presence.
"the red clay that rimmed my tires like lipstick." That is a simile, actually, is also a third space irony of car culture mobility and consequent wider landscape in which to stray. The irony is less accessible than best effect, though, a criteria of stable irony. If the tires were whitewalls and the simile alluded to a white collar -- lipstick stained -- the irony would be related to the clay-stained tires, complete, stable, and accessible. Not to mention function beyond the simile and irony to characterize the contestant, develop the setting and milieu and dramatic situation of the event.
"It was that much like my father -- hidden, silent, and unbreakable." Also simile. More abstract an objective correlative, too. Nor is the sentence subject syntax expletive "It" a clear reference to antecedent subject the safe, rather, refers by default to the torn skin. Occasion missed there to amplify the safe's development through the rhetorical scheme of repetition, substitution, and amplification. The third space irony of the description also alludes to the father's and son's identity insecurity, as well as the father's reserved conduct and the son's frustration and nonconscious want to force the father to open up.
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Thanks extrinsic. You lost me at "metaphoric language." That's the language we use to write similes? I don't understand how that's not just English.
I do understand the difference between simile and metaphor -- it's really important in writing. I don't see the importance here, though, if it is.
Can you make your reply easier for me to understand?
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The term metaphoric language is used as a catch-all for rhetorical tropes: metaphor, simile, synecdoche, metonymy, metalepsis, among others, and, in general, for all figurative language and expression, includes irony, satire, and sarcasm.
Standard Written English formal expression shies from figurative language, exceptions notwithstood. Prose grammars and language depend on figurative language, poetic equipment at least, that expresses more than meets the eye in an economy of words. Metaphor and simile, singular instances and extended spans, entail double and more meaning, or entendre, as well as use of concrete motifs to express otherwise unexpressable abstract concepts.
Simile indirectly compares tangible, material, concrete objects, things, and personas to intangible, immaterial, abstract subjects. Use of words like and as mark simile. Robert Burns' poem indirectly compares love to a rose. "My love is like a red, red rose." Simile. Love is intangible, the red rose is tangible. The line also alludes to a person as like a red rose. Burns only uses the rose blossom in the poem; unstated that roses and thorns are part and parcel of the plant and like love and like a love interest.
Metaphor directly compares tangible, material, concrete objects, things, personas to intangible, immaterial, abstract subjects. For example, Burns paraphrased, My love is a red, red rose. Or a dynamic voice process statement instead of a static voice state of being statement: My love blooms a red, red rose.
Simile in general is more reader accessible than metaphor is, due to the comparison is directly stated though indirect comparison through words like and as and as well more disconnected, doesn't state that some thing is another, rather, one thing is as like another.
Metaphor, if accessible, appeals more and lends greater, clearer, and stronger meaning to a comparison's abstract design. For example, "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." Pablo Picasso. Metaphor washes away from the soul the dust of dreary everyday conversation and technical and journalistic and academic expression. Which do use simile to a greater extent than metaphor. Metaphor's uncommoness for expression, prose in particular, recommends it over simile.
An example of an extended metaphor, also known as a poetic conceit, is Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130", an antithesis figure, too, what the love interest persona is not:
"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare."
Shakespeare satirizes Petrachan poetry's idolization of unattainable love and poetry that overstates and shallowly, emptily flatters a love interest's beauty. And if fully realized, the sonnet's congruent opposite irony reconciles to a message that humans are mortals, not goddesses or gods, yet nonetheless sublime beauty, truth, and goodness.
Edit: That's complex enough, yet the same concepts underpin subtext. The illicit affair subtext of red clay on car tires, frustration with a parent's closed emotional state subtext of violence on a safe, feint praise and condemnation of an ordinary, everyday love interest subtext of satire toward overstated adulation.
That's the way figurative expression is: many concepts, many overlaps, many separate devices and methods, much confusion among the trackless human rhetoric creation to find ways to express unexpressible expressions.
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Understanding everything you have said is on my bucket list.
Saying "My lover is like a rose" would forfeit all control over the simile. She looks like a rose? Red hair? She smells like a rose? She only blooms in the summer? When her petals fall off, all that is left is a rose hip? She needs watering and pruning and fertilizer?
"My lover has the beauty and innocence of a rose" would direct and control the metaphorical device.
It's much more powerful. And better writing. Even in nonfiction arguments, I have grown to hate unfettered metaphorical devices. Poetry may be different, but in normal prose we do not want the reader wandering Mongolia finding things we never meant to say.
Burns is not a sloppy writer, and now we can see his genius. His lover is like a red rose. Now we have an emphasis on color and looks. "Red red" just emphasizes that more -- it is not a rose that just happens to be red.
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quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan: . . . in normal prose we do not want the reader wandering Mongolia finding things we never meant to say.
That -- a foremost consideration for figurative language: why formal composition and formal public discourse, the practices of criminal and civil litigation, for examples, shy from rhetorical devices. No overt abstract, immaterial, or intangible expression yet some degree of covert, persuasive rhetoric use transpires regardless.
The most infamous example of a rhetoric misfire is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Sinclair aimed for readers' minds and, instead, gut punched them. Not so much a failure as a serendipitous Freudian slip. The novel is Sinclair's claim to fame and glory. And odd, the nonconscious subtext of unsanitary food processing outdoes the intended Marxist rhetoric. Toxic food and -- and -- toxic employment and social cultures vie for foremost reader access. The more tangible feature, toxic food wins, through that, the abstract Marxist message conveys yet is largely ignored and disparaged.
Study of these and other related topics could be cursory and haphazard term by term as each presents want for increased appreciation, could be more organized and comprehensive, or all out in-depth rhetoric study. Browser keyword search terms often display a Wikipedia page about a literary topic as well as sites that purport to list a few helpful and most common "literary devices." This one purports to host a complete list, nope, a few hundred most common and nextmost common out of ten thousands: Literary Devices, a middle degree plan of study, noteworthy, too, for definitions, explanations, and examples. Or for the whole of figurative language principles and by taxonomic category, order, genus, species: Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric.
Combined, those two avenues entail a majority fraction of creative, persuasive expression knowledge. A common fiction literary device which neither lists, for example, is False Document, which a Wikipedia article does cursorily define, explain, and provides examples, as well as the types and uses of same for frauds in real-world situations, though far shy of crucial details for prose purposes.
A False Document in prose terms is any tangibly produced object of expression that is real in a fictive milieu though nonexistent in the real world: essay, book, story, motion picture, legal document, letter, email, text message, audio recording, music score, poem, stage or screenplay, sculpture, painting, statue, ad infinitum. For example, Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout's Venus on the Half-Shell is a False Document, and transcended its fictive origins and became real-world real. Philip José Farmer pseudonymously wrote and then published the fictive Trout novel in 1975.
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Farmer wrote several stories purportedly by fictional writers, some of them published under the name of the fictional writer. I believe in this case Farmer secured permission from Vonnegut.
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I think I can try to explain my original point. If I say "He is like a bear", I don't mean he is like a bear in every way. (I probably am not saying anything about hibernation or eating berries or having black nails.)
To control my simile, I should probably indicate what feature of a bear I want. He dances like a bear.
But people still somehow understand the unfettered simile -- they pick out the feature of the bear I want. I hope.
So, when he sees "the red clay that rimmed his tires like lipstick", we can imagine a visual image. That's the feature obviously referred to.
But only in the context of the book can we catch a different meaning. It's still lipstick, it's just a really different feature.
That's what I meant by a double metaphor. (Except I should have said simile.)
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Used figuratively, the word "bear" demonstrates figurative expression challenges, arts, and appeals.
Reader access and comprehension is a foremost challenge and, next most, fresh and vital usage contrasted by reader relatability. "He dances like a bear" is relatable and accessible, portrays a visual sensation and expresses commentary about personality, characterization of a persona observed and of an observer-reporter. Webster's bear, noun, definition 2: "a surly, uncouth, burly, or shambling person". Maybe a less than especially fresh and vital expression, though.
If taken for the literal meaning only, the same sentence evokes a motion image of a man who dances like a trained dancing bear. That then is non-figurative and not simile or metaphor. If the way or a similar preposition substitutes for prepositions like or as, then not a simile.
Hackneyed cliché is another challenge. Trite, tired-out, worn stale, dead figurative language is common to everyday routine expression, could then become idiom, lackluster, and all but invisible expression taken for granted as non-figurative expression.
Figurative language arts evolve from standard language into fresh, vivid, and vital expression. A word like bear, for instance, that as well as accessible regular uses, used for robust figurative expression derives from its denotative meanings, that is, dictionary definitions, standard language uses, etymology, and regular connotations. Bear: noun and verb parts of speech, different definitions, etymologies, and regular uses.
Meanings taken all together, reader relatability considered, and expressed from a fresh perspective, "bear" could be turned into a new, accessible, and lively figurative expression. The most recent new use is for a financial market's bust cycle, bull for a boom cycle. A surly-bear or a charging-bull market?
Expert figurative language studies investigate expression meaning access and comprehensibility. Metaphor, generally, used for the gamut, though subject samples include simile and other tropes, none include rhetorical schemes, probably a stretch too far for scientific rigor and difficult to control and interpret results. Universally, the studies conclude that metaphor is most clear and accessible if verbal, that is, the parts of speech, not the act of speech, per se: verbs, adverbs, and participles' gerunds. Verbal metaphors express greater meaning significance for readers than other speech parts: noun, pronoun, adjective, conjunction, preposition, interjection. Hence, reasonable sense suggests figurative expression does, too, the conclusions of such studies as well.
The simile "He dances like a bear" shows a figurative expression shortfall of simile -- the sentence object phrase, preposition of the object "like," indefinite article adjective "a," and object noun "bear," contains the figurative expression; that is, that simile entails a common, invariant syntax and positioned in a less significant location than predicate or subject phrases. Verbal metaphor instead centers figurative expression around and within a predicate phrase, where it's most reader comprehensible and accessible. Nevertheless, syntax variety notwithstood.
Figurative language without context and texture wrap -- before, within, and after -- leaves reader inference in doubt. Yes, "in the context of the book" readers "catch a different meaning" for red clay smeared on car tires like lipstick. Setup prior to that allusion is wanted so that readers timely access and comprehend the subtext when presented. Prior figures are wanted that foreshadow for suitable reader inferences, maybe later figures, too, for confirmation's sake. Once and done within a single reference, though, leaves readers in doubt whether a figurative expression is meant to or does hold relevance earlier, for the now moment, or later. Uncommon are the readers who will read any narrative more than once; common are readers who miss uncommon allusions.
A graphic representation illustrates. Effort over detail; detail, the x-axis; effort, the y-axis; two plots; one, writer; one, reader, the lines plot an X, the intersection of which is the ideal. No two plots, nor writers, nor readers are the same. William Faulkner lavishes effort on literal detail; Ernest Hemingway does not, instead, lavishes detail on accessible subtext. "Hills Like White Elephants" is a classic Hemingway minimalist short story fraught with understated subtext detail, the title a true simile, not an iota of metaphor or figurative language otherwise, the allusions, though, are manifold and the whole an extended metaphor, or prose conceit.
Yet Faulkner and Hemingway share readers of each's degree of reader effort. Maybe their works have lost current relevance, they're not read much anymore for pleasure, not like when those writers were ascendant; even then, mass-culture readers didn't much read them anyway. They are as timeless and relevant to then and now audience niches as ever.
Reader accessibility and comprehension ease is a standout appeal often overlooked. Abstract cognitive aptitude varies from reader to reader. The distribution curve for abstract cognition degree by reader ranges from little to none for a few -- mostly an aptitude for simple sarcasm expression and interpretation -- some to more for most readers, and much to most for a few readers, a Bell curve shape like a hill like a camel's hump.
If audience numbers matter to a writer, ideally, figurative language accessibility is paramount for appeal's sake, or in the alternative, an utter absence thereof -- except accessible and comprehensible subtext that suits a target audience's cognitive aptitudes, mores, values, beliefs, and sentiments. On yet another hand, maybe such a narrative entails figurative expression invisible and immaterial to one audience niche and rich and foremost accessible for another niche, and so on.
Peculiar that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is read by and a capitalist manifesto for the modern age's mass culture cognitive blinders yet fraught with figurative expression of every overt and covert degree. Response to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle socialist manifesto -- Rand, too, aimed for people's minds and, instead, sucker-punched them in their wallets.
I can use a second situation (or object) to add meaning to a first situation (or object). There are several "metaphorical devices" and I will call these metaphoricals. (Does no one have a good name for these? Really?)
The metaphoricals include simile, metaphor, allusion, and allegory. Actually, allegory was described as a metaphor in Wikipedia; from my perspective allegory is when I make my own metaphor/simile.
Actually applying these terms is not always easy, though that is not an issue for a writer. Metaphors tend to become words. Wallflower? Blizzard? Bear Market. Pitfall? Then there is an in-between state. Or idioms, extrinsic mentioned that.
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I also think that the rules change for poetry, so a discussion that combines poetry with prose would be harikiri.
Postwatch has normal metaphoricals until page 22: Strike me did if you want, it can hardly be worse than killing me by inches. He's a hard loaf. And then, to make sure both cheeks were well-slapped... Her remark was light, but it touched on a matter quite tender.
Then page 22 we start getting:
Thou art my caravel, with sails fully winded, And the bright red banners of they lips dancing as thou speakest.
And Card (well, Christopher Columbus) immediately calls it poetry.
In prose, the goal is to communicate, and the author tries to control the meaning of the metaphorical (mostly). In poetry, the meaning is freer and as long as the reader finds something worthwhile, that's apparently what most matters.
Could be wrong, I'm really not a poet. But if I say that love is like a rose, I either do or do not want the reader thinking of thorns, the idea of being ambiguous is painful.
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Use of one circumstance to express another, unexpressible circumstance is figurative language's occasion. Irony expresses both circumstances through congruent opposites. Allegory alludes to a fictive construct in a fresh manner that expresses a concept difficult to express. Ambiguity could be artful and clear or artless and vague.
The language studies referenced above conclude that figurative expression is most comprehensible if initial and superficial meaning is illogical or irrational; incomprehensibility signals other meaning that then becomes comprehensible due to its incomprehensibility.
Burns does not allude to love as thorny, not even a faint hint of thorns, all effusive praise, and a red, red rose as like human ability to love. No textual thorn content to draw a supportable inference from; that inference is reader independent and subject to debate and error. However, to thine own self be true. If a reader truly infers thorns, thorns there be, regardless of a majority consensus Burns does not reference roses' or love's thorns.
Supportable inference is another matter entirely, as of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. Yet inexperienced or inconvenienced figurative expression readers and obstinate readers will not infer that which is not overtly stated.
From a creator's perspective, as like a composer, a writer, a poet, figurative expression wanders much about a labyrinthine wilderness of signals and receipts. First, poetry includes prose's distinct poetic equipment: less, if any, rhyme scheme, metric accentual rhythms unique to prose, predicated somewhat upon regular English's natural, native spoken iambic pentameter emphases, plus, figurative expression.
Figurative expression signal parameters that poetically equip prose expression are; one, that part or all of an expression is off from otherwise normal expectation by degrees; two, due and no more and no less than due emphasis, three; access and comprehension are timely and of a reader ease; four, an unexpressible, unexplainable, intangible, immaterial, abstract concept leads comprehension of an expressed, explainable, tangible, material, concrete concept; five, that creator and receiver conversationally interact and understand through an expression from a shared interpretive space outside of a normative, everyday, routine conversation space.
Dramatic irony and prose are inseparable, for example, yet all but invisible for readers. Dramatic irony is when one or more entities are "in the know" and one or more entities are not. For best reader effect and lively dramatic movement, ideally, an outcome of a dramatic work remains in doubt until a bittersweet end. At some point prior to publication, even a narrative only shared with an acquaintance, a creator knows the outcome; the acquaintance does not until read through to the outcome at least once, maybe more than once.
Likewise, the hero of a hero's journey narrative does not know the outcome. A good and evil contest narrative -- the villain knows the self is the vile deed's doer, might dispute the deed is vile; the hero does not doubt the deed is vile nor know who the doer is, per se, at first. Nemeses might know each other and each's designs, or not, the unknown known to the creator is which attains the want only one and not the other may achieve. Iconic events, settings, and personas, even writers' prose and topic slants, come pre-equipped with dramatic irony.
If a horror narrative's group of contestants splits up, uh-oh, divided and conquered and dead contestants walking. Basements, attics, caves, towers, places beyond normal social spaces' comfort zones, are signals and emphases of dramatic ironies readers infer or know and contestants are in the dark, oftentimes actually in the dark, that readers infer dramatic events transpire.
Like most or all rhetorical figures, dramatic irony might span a limited situation or span a whole narrative. And irony comes in a dozen labeled species, each a distinct departure from the others, some overlaps occur; dramatic irony and situational irony do often co-transpire.
Plus, as yet unlabeled irony species overlooked are present in the feral opus; like Biblical irony, somewhat like Socratic irony though distinct due to unintended parable teachings that contradict a lesson's actual intent: a situational irony, too.
Prose's poetic equipment are manifold, more than situational "metaphoricals." The best effects of figurative expression come from extended metaphoricals that consume word count to fully realize meaning for creator and receiver alike. Despite public discourse use of the term "rhetoric" for disparagement, the least artful, least beautiful, least truthful, least goodness uses of language arts and sciences, rhetoric is the arts and sciences of persuasion. Persuasion is seduction through beauty, truth, and goodness; manipulation is violence. Language manipulation as well as manipulation of truth, coercion by force of any type, even vain repetition, is rape.
Burns' poem praises womankind's beauty, truth, and goodness though objectifies womankind; Shakespeare's likewise praises humankind's beauty, truth, and goodness, though as well respects personhood above object status. Both exemplify poetic equipment's capacity to express more with less; poetry, generally, a compacted form.
Flash fiction, too, is a compact form, best effect when poetically equipped, or prose poetry sans rhyme and metered rhythm schemes. Less compacted forms, longer fiction, and prose overall nevertheless wants extended poetic equipment, and audience-dependent situational figures, like metaphoricals; in other words, situational metaphoricals want extended development so that their unfamiliar natures are timely reader accessible and comprehensible. Seek the invisible extended setups and follow-thrus of situational metaphoricals.
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan: Sorry, I am still trying to understand this.
Still in the poetry section, he says to her:
and the sight of thy rudder leaves this poor sailor full-masted.
There is no attempt to better understand one situation by reference to a second.
The rudder, the aft end, or backside -- full-masted? The sailor's member is an erected mast. There, the allusive design is explicit obfuscation of impolite, unexpressible concepts due to genteel sensibilities. Yet closer to the surface meaning than prior lines out of the women and sailor's increased desperation and frustrated designs. Rather than a mast, though, a gin pole or bowsprit are more apt for the relative situation, horizontal rather than vertical posture, though less reader accessible, and yet true to the ultimate outcome the sailor prefers. A nautical vessel's maidenhead, or figurehead, is also at the bow end's forward-front face . . .
That increased desperation is lively dramatic movement, too. Will they or won't they remains in doubt, more so in doubt, also, dramatic irony, that the creator knows and readers infer the outcome and the sailor and woman do not know. Maybe the woman does know, thinks she does, anyway, subject to genuine or coy deference change and thus keeps the outcome in doubt until the scene's bittersweet, irrevocable, unequivocal end.
Edit: Figurative expression basics might take weeks of study to realize; proficiency, months; mastery, years. Early childhood exposures to multiple bind events presents a head start. For example, a double bind, Dad gives children sweet treats before dinner and says don't tell Mom. Mom says your dad wants you to clean your plate, though takes her plate to the kitchen and scrapes off what she wouldn't eat.
Mom makes a fried calf's liver and onions, turnip mash, and kale greens dinner. The liver and onions are scorched shoe leather and shoelaces; the mash, bitter, stiff, and starchy wallpaper paste; the greens, oily, bland, and limp seaweed, exactly like her mom made. Dad loves the mess, reminds him of his mother's cuisine.
For me, that meal is a punishment dinner (Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 2001), reminder to the family not to take Mom for granted and to respect her wisdom and will. Seven siblings, each in their turn exposed to that double bind: finish your unpalatable plate. None defeated Mom's will. My preparation of the same meal, though, is a gourmet's delight, for we who like artfully, tastefully prepared liver and onions, turnips, and kale anyway.
The foundation is a simile: Something is said to be similar to something else. Not in every way, of course.
A metaphor is an implied simile. The animal was like a bear is a simile. The animal was a bear is not a metaphor. That man is a bear is a metaphor only because it cannot be true -- we are assigning Fred a property he cannot actually have.
More generally, when we ascribe a property to an object that the object cannot have, we (probably?) create a metaphor.
I could feel the misery coming off of her in waves. Misery does not come off in waves. Simile to heat waves? Or ocean waves.
My melancholy ripened. Simile to fruit.
Note that in these two examples, the second object of the simile is not mentioned.
The wind, which had been fighting against me, rested for a moment. Then it returned with increased fury. Wind does not intentional fight, and it does not rest or return from someplace.
His anger evaporated (solidified, exploded, grew larger, darkened)
A simile can also be created by conjunction:
I could feel her as she stepped closer, a mixture of perfume and disdain...
The conjuctional simile can be bi-directional -- the disdain is in some way like perfume, and the perfume is in some way like disdain.
(This last example, and two of the above, are from Hart's The King of Lies.)
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Much of figurative expression is allusion of one circumstance to another that might not be a natural and expected part or whole of either. Similarity is one criteria; difference is another, many other criteria, too, exclusive to one or overlaps of several.
Metalepsis, for example, a type of allusion that uses extant figurative expression artifacts for a new, perhaps paradoxical, context: Always look Greek gift horses in the mouth. Allusion to an Irish maxim -- never look a gift horse in the mouth; and a Roman maxim -- beware of Greeks who bear gifts. The first sentence from William Gibson's Neuromancer, metalepsis: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
"I could feel the misery coming off of her in waves." Verbal "in waves" use as a sentence predicate compliment phrase's adverb, is a verbal metaphor. Several aesthetic and grammar considerations for that sentence. "I could feel" is an unnecessary extra lens filter. An unnecessary -ing word. Doubled verbal particle phrases "off of her" and "in waves" de-emphasize the main idea. Neither coming in waves nor coming off of her are the main idea; abundant and obvious misery is. //Misery waves heaved off her.// Verbal metaphor.
"My melancholy _ripened_." Verbal metaphor.
"The wind, which had been _fighting_ against me, _rested_ for a moment." Verbal metaphors. A pronoun and a tense error: //that _had_ fought against me// "had" optional.
"I could feel her as she stepped closer, a mixture of perfume and disdain . . ." Though "as" is present, not a simile. "Disdain" is the noun case used as an adjective that modifies "she" and "her" and parallel and coordinate to "perfume," also a noun adjective case. Nominative metaphors that state "her" and "she" is perfume and disdain, not like or as -- is. The compound predicate verb of the appositive phrase elided and a comma substituted. Exuded? Oozed? Verbal metaphors.
Also, "as" conjunction error, a correlative conjunction, not a coordination conjunction substitute for while or when. A test for coordination is whether and substitutes. Nope. If recast, maybe. //She stepped closer, and I could feel her: a mixture of perfume and disdain . . .//
Subordination conjunction? Maybe, if the subordinated idea is part of the subordinate clause in its less emphasized sentence position and the main idea emphasis is part of and positioned in the main clause. //When [maybe as] she stepped closer, I could feel her -- a mixture of perfume and disdain . . .// However, what passes for par prose grammar anymore often contains convenient idiom idiolect habits rather than due emphasis organization and concise expression.
Metonymy and synecdoche are the particular figures that ascribe attributes and properties to persons, things, and objects -- metaphor-like, in that they compare and contrast parts and wholes, genus and species; nicknames, for example. Tiny Red is a large red-haired person's nickname. The person's physical properties are neither tiny nor allover red, a synecdoche. All hands on deck, synecdoche: the crew hands' properties represent the whole persons.
Or, say, a person who a government employs is the property of the state. Metonymy; an attribute, though not a property, of government employment. The labor bureau released job numbers today. Metonymy; the labor bureau an attribute of a labor statistics agency, not a property of labor, besides, a person actually releases data, not a nonperson. Although not exclusively, generally, those figures are nominative rather than verbal, are name related.
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Question #1. Wikipedia says "A metaphor is a figure of speech that directly refers to one thing by mentioning another for rhetorical effect."
You and I are both comfortable with "My melancholy ripened" being a metaphor. But it does not mention the other thing.
Question #2. Figurative language could (and probably should) be defined as language that says more then the literal meaning of the words.
Perhaps every sentence has more meaning than just the words; maybe he issue is that the literal meaning is false?
I am not sure if figurative language includes pejoratives.
Anyway, figurative language would not include similes: "My life is like a bad romance novel" is meant to be taken literally. True?
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Answer 1: Melancholy and ripeness are an emotion and a food property, compares melancholy to a natural food ready to eat. The cognitive dissonance reconciled, or congruent opposites' third-space meaning, of the metaphor expresses melancholy is a desired state at the moment and yet also that the melancholy has reached a maximum and unstable state and is subject to change, spoil probably.
Yes, direct comparison between a mood and a food property, and two things, though one a noun and the other a verb. Though the example contains two things, mood and food, more is expressed than a superficial interpretation of the words, and, due to intellectual engagement, appeals as well emotionally: pathos, which is a central facet of figurative language.
Answer 2: Figurative language says more than a superficial meaning of words expressed. The very contrast of literal and figurative expression is the accepted dual distinction of expression modes, yet more than dual, triple and more possible. Often, if not always, figurative expression expresses personal emotional appeals; pathos, a third, at least, meaning space.
Literal expression, for most intents and purposes, intends dispassionate, impersonal, and emotionless expression, though valid and true and often somewhat emotional nonetheless.
Figurative language does entail pejoratives, in so far as disparagement is the covert or overt intent or nonconcious consequence of careless expression. Also, pejorative commentary can be ironic, for example, express a congruent opposite of disparagement.
Courtly irony condemns through faint praise and praises through faint condemnation, and more, covertly mocks and ridicules vice and folly, sarcasm that covertly emphasizes virtue and prudence. Plus, of course, emotional appeals, often ambivalence weighted more to one valence, to a positive or negative third-space meaning. Naturalism's pessimistic nihilism, on the other hand, mocks and ridicules virtue and prudence, yet, ironically, covertly emphasizes the congruent opposites.
A facet of figurative language is that, perhaps, two or more irreconcilable aspects cannot both be true, yet, paradoxically, expresses a greater covert truth and validates both a literal and a figurative meaning.
Litotes (lye-tow-tees) is a common figure used in everyday conversation: understatement that affirms the positive opposite of a negation statement, usually a negation, and entails validity of both the literal and figurative meaning and a greater covert truth. "No, you didn't win the lottery!?" A litotes. The speaker disbelieves and believes, at the same time, unsure the recipient won the lottery and emotionally expresses surprise and delight or other emotions, envy or jealousy or resentment maybe, about the lottery win.
"My life is like a bad novel." compares an exasperated personal life to a literary artifact's attributes, simile's indirect allusion through an explicit comparison. Nonetheless figurative expression though literally expressed comparison, both "literally's" common connotations, actually and of a literary artifact.
posted
Thanks. I think I am a little better at figurative language, just by being sensitized to it, and I even found one little trick for creating metaphors!
Maybe you would like this. I don' even know if i's literal or figurative. He finds out his wife is having an affair. "Now I understand what it means for a human being to feel empty."
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"Now I understand what it means for a human being to feel empty."
Definitively a metaphor, direct allusion, indirectly compares the emotion heartache, an attribute, to a container content property. Also, the sentence entails emphasis at the end: auxesis, or climax, and hyperbole rhetorical figures.
One consideration, definite and finite verbal metaphors are twice or more reader and listener accessible and comprehensible as indefinite and nonfinite nominative metaphors, and, therefore, more appeal and more memorable.
//Now I understand what it means for a human being to feel emptied.//
However, the tense sequence is confused -- maybe an artful and apt use, though, covert stream-of-consciousness expression of emotional confusion -- from two simple present tense verbs to infinitive to simple past tense and progressive tense participle gerund "being" in the mix.
//Now I understood what it meant for a person to feel emptied.//
And a large number of variants for the content, context, texture, and rhetorical situation.
//I now understood how a person felt emptied.// Ad infinitum.
Figurative expression's fourth meaning space is moral aptitude. The setup and sentence intimates one person's immoral act inflicted severe emotional pain on another. Vices of lust, at least, and pride, maybe gluttony and sloth.
auxesis: "1. Arranging words or clauses in a sequence of increasing force. In this sense, auxesis is comparable to climax and has sometimes been called incrementum. 2. A figure of speech in which something is referred to in terms disproportionately large (a kind of exaggeration or hyperbole) [and overstatement]. 3. Amplification in general." ("Auxesis," Silva Rhetoricae, Gideon Burton, rhetoric.byu.edu)
Auxesis, or climax, is also an extended figure, for prose, a dramatic movement and congruent emotional movement arc from start to middle to end of a narrative.
posted
I had another thought. I could say that apples are similar to oranges. Or the other day I actually thought to myself that two people were similar.
That isn't an attempt to describe either one. Any two things have similarities and differences. That's more like Venn diagrams.
So that doesn't have much to do with writing. Or using similes or metaphors in writing. I hope that doesn't even count as a simile.
But if you go back to the OP, in terms of Venn diagrams, it would not be surprising for the lipstick and clay to have more than one thing in common.
From the perspective of writing, it is surprising that lipstick and clay are actually two similes.
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posted
"Now I understand what it means for a human being to feel empty." Is a metaphor that compares a person to a container.
Lipstick and clay properties and attributes entail similarities, can be used for metaphor or simile, though in and of themselves are not similes or metaphors. Early history makeups and sunscreens often used "earths" mixed with animal fats. For example, lipstick contains "earth" pigments that color lipstick. Many clay types are used to color products. Both are messy, too, and "plastic," or "fluid," materials, approximate each other's textures and consistencies.
A Venn diagram might suggest similarities and contrasts that then can be used to construct fresh and lively, accessible and comprehensible figurative expression appeals. "Earth" colors of lipsticks and other makeup, for example, contain ochres, siennas, umbers, arsenic, cinnabar, minium, cadmium, ultramarine, and so on, color products. An explicit color name for red clay could covertly then allude to lipstick or vice versa. Specific setup, delivery, and follow-thru context and texture wrap remain essential for access and comprehension.
The four meaning space domains are likewise essentials: overtext, subtext, sub-subtext (subtext₂), and sub-sub-subtext (subtext₃), respectively, a surface dramatic movement; a congruent opposite, near surface, covert dramatic movement; a more covert emotional movement; and a yet more covert moral movement; and the four domains reconcile into a unified and accessible, comprehensible, satisfied whole movement.
posted
In fiction, a simile doesn't say two things are similar. And it doesn't compare them. I know everyone says that. I accepted that. It just doesn't work.
Her hand flashes out with lightning speed to slap me. I'm not comparing her hand to lightning. I'm saying the speed of her hand is the same as the speed of lightning. (Exaggeration, of course).
So, again, in writing use a second situation (or object) to help the reader understand a first situation (or object). I am not saying the two things are similar; I am not comparing them. No Venn diagrams.
Obviously, they must share at least one feature, and one way or another I hope the reader understands what that feature is.
Does that make sense? Am I saying the obvious?
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"Her hand flashes out with lightning speed to slap me." is a direct allusion to similarity and indirect comparison of hand speed to the speed of lightning, therefore, a metaphor. And in this use is hyperbole. The predicate verb "flashes" is also a direct allusion, a verbal metaphor.
A simile does directly state a comparison, indirectly alludes to similarity, regardless of whether fiction or any other expression mode. Simile and similar both derive from Latin similis, translation: like. Metaphor's Greek etymology translates from metapherein, to transfer. Buried in time's mists, too, the Greek word alludes to the troublesome blemishes fruits and vegetables acquire from fantastic meddlers: naiads and nymphs.
Contrastive comparison also entails figurative expression; overstatement at least, or hyperbole, other figures, too, might meld into simile or metaphor. A hand speed and lightning speed metaphor is a contrastive overstatement allusion. The "slaps" end of the sentence is also auxesis' end emphasis. The word "slap" is also onomatopoeia, the word's pronunciation imitates the sound of the action, also a rhetorical figure. And mimesis, a figure also, means imitation, of whatever scope's dimension.
Poetic equipment need not be wordplay adornment and decoration fireworks and acrobatics; often, rather, best call little, if any, undue attention to the poetic equipment of expression.
The sentence's preposition "with" of the object "lightning speed" is a grammatical error, though, common to everyday expression and stream-of-consciousness expression, an idiom. Instead, the adverb particle at is apt. "lightning speed" is a predicate modifier, and adverbial phrase, therefore, favors an adverb. Due to multiple-word verb constructs take either adverb or preposition particles, and many words' uses are either a preposition or adverb, convenient habit occasion often arises to switch a preposition for an adverb particle part of speech and vice versa.
The predicate's main verb "flashes" use is also a transitive verb variant that requires an object. The verb, like many verbs, optionally, can be an intransitive verb, requires no object or particle. //Her hand flashes to slap me at lightning speed.//
"to slap" also looses emphasis due to it is an indefinite, nonfinite infinitive verb. Does or does not actually slap me? A coordination conjunction is more apt, this case, a compound predicate, that expresses sequential actions as near to contemporaneous or metaphorically simultaneous: //Her hand flashes out at lightning speed and slaps me.//
Or asyndeton, conjunction words elided (elision itself an expression figure): //Her hand flashes out at lightning speed, slaps me.// "out" might be omitted, too. Or for prose's metaphoric simple past tense substitution for simple present tense and the strength of past tense's enhanced objectivity, clarity, and stronger expression emphasis: //Her hand flashed at lightning speed, slapped me.//
The comma, too, could instead be a dash -- for prose. The dash distinguishes the immediate sequence of the action progression and causes a stronger pause that separates for the true greater surprise of the first action's consequent action, mimesis that imitates the shocked reality and allusion of the events: //Her hand flashed at lightning speed -- slapped me.//
A non -ing word might also replace the gerund "lightning": //Her hand flashed at light speed -- slapped me.// Prose loathes poetry's rhyme schemes and rigid metered accentual verse. Numerous -ing uses accumulates an -ing ring-rhyme nuisance.
Compare and contrast, length at least; fewer, more concise words express less, the same, or more? For a two-thousand word composition, this type of word economy adds up to a full manuscript page. More page real estate for lively and vivid story development or shorter story?
Her hand flashes out with lightning speed to slap me. Her hand flashed at light speed -- slapped me.
posted
You could describe or define a simile as saying two things are similar. You would have a lot of company. (And a great mnemonic.)
But it would be misleading. That doesn't say why similes are used in fiction writing, and it leaves out critical details of how they are used.
It wouldn't tell children how to write better or use similes.
The simile is highly similar to a metaphor and they need to be considered together in teaching how and why to use them. A symptom of the underlying problem is that we have no word for the two of them. That makes conversation awkward.
And it leads to contrasting similes and metaphors, when really it's the commonality that's most important. (Also, the traditional "contrast" leaves out important differences, like that a metaphor is a simile on steroids.)
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posted
Grade school literary device instruction caliber resembles math, science, grammar, etc., instruction caliber: general basics introduction and surveys of a few dozen concepts' approximations, rapid fire and never touched in class again. The process relies upon Socratic irony, though instructors might know it not. Here's an introduction's basics. Huh. Not much to it. Why bother then?
Oh, there is so much more to it than a single twenty-minute class session! Whoa? Or all engines ahead full steam toward the sacred mysteries of figurative expression? Successful, confident, competent figurative expression students of any age independently study at each's given pace, baby steps and seven-league boot strides here and there to the stars. The true function of Socratic irony therein: congruently, oppositely persuade any who will endeavor to seek advanced knowledge through the self's initiative.
Rhetoric instruction back when the subject was a general curriculum topic taught at preparatory schools, not general education schools, pre-twentieth century, also skimmed basics and surveyed basic principles. The few schools that delved deep into the topic operated much earlier: classic Greek and Roman antiquity, and a Renaissance resurgence long since abandoned.
Formal rhetoric instruction and student study is few and far between today, even at colleges and on to postgraduate study.
Simile and metaphor are English instruction vocabulary words and introductory principles from seventh grade on, for many school districts, not the majority, maybe less than half. For the past seventy-five years, even those basic instructions have declined to near extinction for today's grade schools. Maybe a mention arises in high schools, not much more than a glossary handout and brief discussion and as soon forgotten. The brutal truth is instructors anymore misunderstand rhetoric and, therefore, avoid topics they don't understand.
Blame lays most with teaching teachers teaching anymore is about navigation of the workplace culture politics more than actual instruction principles. Overall society, too, fosters a general anti-intellectual exceptionalism. That is due to leaderships' disparagement of literacy and belief an under-educated populace is easier to control and bond into wage servitude for leaders' enrichment and sloth.
Yet out in the wild, wide world, feral rhetoric usages are more common than breath, and more often off-target and ineffective persuasions than productive expressions. Most people develop basic rhetoric aptitudes through mimicry and absorption. What proverbial they say about ignorance is dangerous: incomplete knowledge is most dangerous.
Simile and metaphor are congruent opposites of each other, both express unexpressible expressions. Simile directly compares and contrasts and indirectly alludes; metaphor directly alludes and indirectly compares and contrasts. That plain and simple. Beyond those basics lays a labyrinthine abyss of difficult and complex rhetoric that can be realized with some effort and passion.
Even the word "rhetoric" spoken or written causes violent eye rattles across the world. And the term's uses more often are dysphemistic anymore than neutral: opposite of euphemism, derogates rather than gentles. Never mind "metaphor" and "simile's" misuses and misapplications.
Yet most people would rather be automatons, witless to the corrupt lies, cheats, and thefts persuasions of others who would think for them, and to all their detriments.
Effective metaphor and simile instruction gentles young students into uses and realizations. The labels themselves are mere shorthand for an ordered cosmos of principles, begun with label introductions and unequivocal study examples. Simile first, for simile is easiest to comprehend, develop and, for most students, already an intuitive aptitude, like a familiar drink of tap water.
Next, compare and contrast simile and metaphor. No force needed, observe instead that students already intuitively somewhat use metaphor. Like a first encounter of strong drink, observe they learned how somewhat in their younger years and, if they would build their skills and reap the rewards, here we go . . .
Much of everyday expression uses metaphor. After all, we all struggle to express ourselves clearly from an early age and unto death, and use skewed metaphors if simile becomes ineffective and repetitively dull.
Persuasion first establishes a want to share understanding, though default resistance or outright denial is a first reaction. Gentle persuasion gentles a wild horse; a broken horse is no friend of humanity, more so a witless and recalcitrant servant of and for humanity's convenient habits, more so a donkey or a mule. Either horse can be led to water; neither horse can be forced to drink; actually, wild horses know where to or can find drink on their own and often lead thirsty humans to hidden waters.
The word, term, label, name for the category of rhetoric to which simile and metaphor belong is trope. Another much misused and misunderstood term. Most uses confuse trope for topos, which dictionaries do get right. Dictionaries do the word trope great disservice. Trope, from the Silva Rhetoricea of Gideon Burton at rhetoric.byu.edu: "An artful deviation from the ordinary or principal signification of a word." "Reference to one thing as another" is a trope subcategory and contains five distinguishable types: metaphor, simile, synecdoche, metonymy, and personification. Figures of speech: Trope -- nineteen figure types indexed within five subcategories. http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/Tropes.htm
These apply to all composition, regardless of form or medium: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, script, formal essay, journalism, everyday conversation, etc.
posted
These five sentences were given as examples of simile.
Our soldiers are as brave as lions. Her cheeks are red like a rose. He is as funny as a monkey. The water well was as dry as a bone. He is as cunning as a fox.
To say the OBVIOUS, every one of these focuses on a specific property (brave, red, funny,dry,cunning). Every example is trying to describe the first thing.
So, you would think the definition of simile would fit these sentences, BUT IT DOES NOT!!!!
A simile is a figure of speech that makes a comparison, showing similarities between two different things.
There's no mention of the property, even though that appears in every sentence. Worse, none of the sentences are doing what that definition suggests. Ugh.
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Right, at the superficial level several things don't work well. Consider this:
His spirit was broken in two.
To say the obvious, his spirit can't literally break in two. So this must be taken figuratively.
Humans can makes sense of this. I don't think there has to be an object, but the reader might imagine a stick breaking in two. (For broken into pieces, a glass or plate might be imagined.)
Or "feral rhetoric usage" cannot be taken literally.
So it's a general principle, and one way it could play out is giving traits to an object that only apply literally to a person. And that gets a name (personification). So instead of trying to understand the general principle, a student might be directed to just one aspect of it.
Note that my first example gives the trait of an object to a person.
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"Note that my first example gives the trait of an object to a person."
"trait," maybe nonconsious, metaphor likewise alludes to an object as a person, personification, too. That's how easy and often invisible figurative expression is.
A person's spirit broken in two contains a hidden metaphor, "spirit" taken for mood, and both it and "broken" are sensory expressions able to be visualized. Not so clearly sensed for this verbal metaphor: Marta ran the daycare.
One of my bête noires is idiom uses of words far off from their denotative definitions and meanings, for example, run for any action other than rapid ambulation. Marta ran the daycare. Managed? Operated? Clerked? Worked? Or a consumer who physically ran through the daycare premises?
However, within such and all of everyday idiom are the feral origins and mannerisms of figurative expression, aptitude development, and figurative expression's appeals, challenges, and shortfalls. Maybe a four-year-old first coined run for a fresh, lively expression in the mists of time, emerged a metaphor, soon, a tired, trite expression, or cliché, long ago became a common idiom taken as conventional, comprehensible for and used by experienced native speakers though impenetrable, at first, for very young native speakers and nonnative speakers. Such is another instruction lesson occasion for the manifold complexities of figurative expression mischief management.
posted
I have a question. Is there any consensus on whether similes have to be figurative?
My new car is a lot like my old car.
Meant to be taken literally, right? One website listed this as a simile:
Our soldiers are as brave as lions.
If true, it's not figurative. If not, it's just hyperbole.
Superman is as fast as a speeding bullet Superman is faster than a speeding bullet.
But the argument for figurative is really good.
Men are like cliches.
Actually, men have very few features in common with cliches. Men are a lot more like women, or giraffes,, or even trees (cells and DNA) or even forks (mass and volume). But the reader can understand that as meaning only a few features.
So it doesn't mean what it literally says.
Bill is like a giraffe.
Bill shares a lot of features in common with a giraffe -- heart, lungs, cells, mass, etc. But this means (probably) that Bill is tall and thin with a long neck, but not as tall and not as long of neck as a giraffe.
So the reader knows this simile applies to features that are not a good match! So this too is not meant to be literal.
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The first example might or might not be a simile. The other examples are similes.
"My new car is a lot like my old car." is a direct comparison and an indirect allusion, contains "like," and, though tangible contexts, overlooks the common idiomatic comparison of "new" to "old"; that is, the "new" car might be new to the reporter yet of an older model year than the "old" car's newer model year. That latter sense, the statement is at least nonspecific and potentially figurative.
//My latest car is a lot like my previous car.// is more literal, though nonetheless allusive, and lacks identity context and emotional-moral texture development, which are rhetoric's persuasion functions. How do the cars resemble each other? What does the statement overtly intend to convey about the cars and covertly about the reporter? How, most of all.
Who is given. A cue about when in the original, not enough. Where not at all. Who, when, where, identity contexts. Texture's why is most important for expression, causation's kernel feature, plus antagonal and tensional facets. Plus what, that is also an overt given: my cars. No covert what given. Emotional-moral texture: what, why, and how. Context and texture altogether, the six W-questions.
How do the cars resemble each other? Those cars are not one and the same identical; therefore, some type of figurative comparison, simile's forte. Yes, maybe not spectacular poetic fireworks, entails some idiom content, nonetheless figurative expression, though. Maybe is or is not simile.
By default, most receivers would interpret the statement as non-figurative and non-idiomatic. Take it at "face value" due to no cues or clues the statement is otherwise.
posted
Language altogether is figurative, metaphor included and as prone toward staleness and commonness or mystic delights as any other figure.
Simile and other figures span an expression distribution curve gamut from little, if any, subtext meaning intimated at one extreme to profound and sublime subtext meaning or meanings at another extreme. The mid-range apex cluster, a hill, so to speak, is most numerous and of a mean-average subtext meaning and creator-receiver comprehensibility. No eithers or ors about language other than what an individual signals and another individual receives and consensuses about each's persuasion effectiveness.
"Superman is faster than a speeding bullet" is a less obvious simile than ones which contain like or as. Common enough usage, the syntax is a sentence subject, a to be verb, usually, more dynamic verbs (process verbs substituted for state-of-being verbs) may serve, too, a comparative adjective, and an apt preposition linked to a sentence object.
Superman [noun subject] is [predicate transitive verb] faster [comparative adjective] than [object preposition link] a speeding bullet [subjective case object of the predicate]. Direct comparison expressed, indirect allusion: simile.
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