Writing About Literature 11. Metaphor and Simile

Metaphor A comparison between two distinctly different things that actually have at least one thing in common. Examples: Baby this town rips the bones from your back. It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap. -- “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer Drinker of horizon’s fluid line. -- “Not Palaces, An Era’s Crown” by Stephen Spender

Tenor and Vehicle The building blocks of a metaphor. Tenor is the subject that the metaphor is applied to. Vehicle is the figure of speech which conveys meaning and helps us understand the tenor. Example: America is a melting pot. Tenor: America Vehicle: melting pot

tenor vehicle O, my love is like a red, red rose, (original: O, my luve's like a red, red rose, ) --Robert Burns "Red, Red Rose"

tenor vehicle My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun --Emily Dickinson

tenor vehicle tenor vehicle I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds --Wallace Stevens “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

tenor vehicle I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. --Sylvia Plath “Metaphors”

Implicit metaphor A metaphor in which the tenor is not specified, only implied. Example: That reed was too frail to survive the storm of its sorrows. --M.H. Abrams Unspecified Tenor: a human being; Vehicle: reed Specified Tenor: sorrows; Vehicle: storm

Simile A comparison between two distinctly different things that actually have at least one thing in common, indicated by the terms “like” or “as.” While metaphor asserts identity, simile asserts similarity: When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by TS Eliot Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge There are knives that glitter like altars In a dark church from "Butcher Shop" by Charles Simic