Metaphors and Similes

Metaphors and Similes

 

Metaphor is a powerful way of telling the truth in other than a concrete way.  It’s called abstract.

 You can give your descriptions a big push with a metaphor.   Essentially, a metaphor is the likening of two objects, phenomena or concepts to each other. 

 As a figure of speech, metaphor is a way of describing one thing in terms of another. 

 “My husband is a bulldog.”  “The day was a diamond.” 

 A vivid metaphor is compelling. It opens a door, adds zip to a piece, gives you a way to express something difficult and is a forceful tool.

 “In Alaska, icebergs are white prisons.”

 “My heart is a rose that blooms for you.”  Corny, but makes a point.

You can use a metaphor to compare, contrast or describe. “His hair was so fine that a kitty cat could lick it off.”

 “It was like a gold filling in a mouthful of decay.”

 “He talked like a verbal machine gun.”

Let’s say that we a comparing a children’s beach ball.  What part of it are you going to make the metaphor about?  The plastic smoothness of its surface?  The shape of its trajectory as it arcs through the sunlight?  The sound it makes when Uncle Bill slaps it with his palm?  The smell of it when you’re blowing it up?  Let’s say we pick the shape of its trajectory. There are infinite possibilities.  One is that the ball is the sun arcing across the sky.  Another would be that the ball arcs like a rainbow over the ocean.

We can begin with a known metaphor and make it more abstract to move away from the cliché:

“Her hair was black as night.” (Cliché)  “Her hair was as black as the hour after bedtime.”  Or, “Her hair was as black as her patent leather pumps.”

As a metaphorical comparison, we sometimes use “than.”  “Her scar was wider than the San Andreas Fault.”

Metaphors are one of the most powerful ways to express the wholeness of our ideas.

My mother’s alcohol abuse:

 The house on Lauderdale Avenue had moods.  Sometimes I saw the house standing square and tall.  As soon as I stepped inside, the place welcomed and warmed me. The slipcovers on the couch were straight, orange gladiolas graced the fireplace mantel, the dining room table was set for four, the house exuded roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and the smell went clear through to the rafters.

Other times, the house folded in upon itself.  As I walked up the porch steps, the house sagged.  Once I got inside, the grief was strewn all over.  The slipcovers on the couch crumpled, ashtrays were dumped, gladiolas were dead and the dining room table was shamed by sticky glasses with lipsticked rims.  The only smells from the kitchen were from bourbon and Pall Malls.

Defining work:

“…to succeed on the Salomon Brothers trading floor, a person had to wake up each morning ‘ready to bite the ass off a bear.'"  -- Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker.

 Simile

Simile is saying that one thing is similar to another, using like or as:  my love is like a red, red rose.  It sounds casual, conversational and lacks the authority of a metaphor. But similes are fun and sometimes what something isn’t can tell you a lot about what is:

 

As comfortable as a hairbrush in bed

As graceful as a hippopotamus on roller skates

As clean as a coal miner’s fingernails

As convenient as an unabridged dictionary

As reassuring as a dentists’ smile

As exciting as a plateful of cabbage

As pleasant as ice water in your shoe

As welcome as a rainy Saturday

As easy as collecting feathers in a hurricane

As interesting as the magazines in a doctor’s waiting room

As happy as a four-year-old in a bathtub of Kool Aid

As sweet as snake venom

Cleaner than Comet

 

Using metaphors and similes makes for artful truth telling.

Catherine Alexander
catherine@catherinealexander.net