Smiley Face Trick #2 Figurative Language ~Mary Ellen Ledbetter

Figurative Language: Non-literal comparisons—such as similes, metaphors, personification, and hyperbole (exaggeration), —add “spice” to writing and can help paint a more vivid picture for the reader.

EXAMPLES: My hair is like peach fuzz. (simile) When we first moved into the house on Orchid Street, I didn’t like it. My room was hot, cramped, and stuffy as a train in the middle of the Sahara. And the looming skeleton-like gray and white frame of the place scared me. I dared not imagine living there, but the backyard, oh, the backyard. It was a huge, long mass of plentifully growing trees and blackberries. Goodness, how I loved them. (simile and personification) (Teri, 7th grade) It was a hot July morning, and the last few days of freedom before school were slipping by as fast as a greased ten-foot-long boa constrictor at the ice capades. In other words, I only had a week and a half to play my brains out both inside and outside, and a week and a half before the evil schoolwork monsters took over my time, a week and a half before life as I had known it these past two months was over. (simile, hyperbole, personification) (Aaron, 7th grade) Straight ahead of him he saw between the tree trunks the sun, just rising, very red and clear. Everything was perfectly still, as if he were the only living creature in that country. (simile, hyperbole) (Lewis, TLTWATW, 25)

Now find and write down the Figurative Language in the following excerpts from renowned, published authors. Thick fog was all I could see out my window in the morning, and I could feel the claustrophobia creeping up on me. You could never see the sky here; it was like a cage. (personification, exaggeration, simile) (Meyer, Twilight, 11) He was trapped inside the Grand Gallery, and there existed only one person on earth to whom he could pass the torch. Sauniere gazed up at the walls of his opulent prison. A collection of the world’s most famous paintings seemed to smile down on him like old friends. (oxymoron, personification, simile) (Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 5)