1. Figurative Language
An overview

2. Metaphors and Similes
s Metaphors and similes involve comparisons
between two unlike things
s Literal comparison
– His car is as fast as Tom’s car
– The Exorcist is scarier than The Blair Witch
Project
s Figurative comparison
– His car is as fast as lighting (simile)
– My love life is a soap opera (metaphor)

3. Simile asserts a resemblance
s “bent double like old beggars under
sacks”
s “coughing like hags”
s “obscene as cancer”
s “roots ripe as old bait”
s “bulky as a sleeping cat”
s “cinders that covered the ground like
snow”

4. Metaphor asserts an identity
s “the mountain of beans in my lap”
s [hailstones are] “little white planets”
s “It was festival, carnival”
s “the wolf whine of the siren”
s “Old age is a flight of small cheeping
birds.”

5. A poem using metaphors
s On the next slide I provide the text of
Sylvia Plath’s poem “Metaphors.”
s It consists of a series of metaphors for
the same thing.
s Can you figure out what all the
metaphors refer to?

6. Metaphors
I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
Oh red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

7. Answer
s The metaphors describe a pregnant woman.
For example—”Eaten a bag of green apples”
can refer to both morning sickness and the
baby bump. “A melon strolling on two
tendrils” describes the look of the pregnant
woman’s body—huge stomach on two thin
legs. A pregnancy is “a riddle in nine
syllables” because it lasts nine months and at
the time this was written the sex of the child
would be a mystery.

8. Parts of a comparison
s Tenor: real object s Vehicle: What it’s
compared to
s Pregnant woman s elephant
s experience of becoming s “boarded the train
pregnant and feeling there’s no getting
your body swell and off”
change as the birth
comes closer 0r going
into labor

9. Extended metaphor
s In “Metaphors” several different
metaphors were provided for one thing.
In some poems a single metaphor is
elaborated on for several lines,
supported by various related
comparisons. Let’s look at Langston
Hughes’s “Mother to Son.” What
metaphor for life is used in this poem?

10. Extended metaphor
Mother to Son
Well, son I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor--
Bare.
But all the time I’se been a climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s
And turnin’ corners
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
. . . Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

11. Extended metaphor
s An extended metaphor is continued over at
least several lines of the poem. When the
whole poem involves an extended metaphor
we can also call that the controlling metaphor
of the poem. In “Mother to Son” the
controlling metaphor is that the journey
through life is like climbing a staircase, but
everyone does not have the same sort of
staircase to climb. The next page breaks
down some of the smaller comparisons that
are part of this controlling metaphor.

12. “Mother to Son”
s Vehicle s Tenor
s Crystal stair s An easy life filled with
luxuries
s Hard life of poverty and
s Dark staircase in need struggle
of repair
s Splinters s Small problems
s Tacks s Significant hardships
s Boards torn up s Lacking basic support
s Reaching landings s Reaching turning points
or milestones

13. “MARKS”
s Linda Pastan’s “Marks” is another good
example of a poem with a controlling
metaphor. The speaker is a woman who
compares herself to a student ready to
drop out of school as she explains that
she is tried of feeling criticized or
unappreciated by her family.

14. “Marks”
s Vehicle s Tenor
– Student – Wife and mother
– Teachers – Husband, kids
– Sex, cooking,
– Courses or
ironing, childrearing
assignments
– Comments or
– Grades criticisms
– Dropping out of – Getting divorced or
school not playing trad. role
anymore

15. Personification
s Attributing human qualities to non-human
things (a kind of metaphor)
– “Fearing the chronic angers of that house”
– “even the dirt kept breathing a small breath”
– A poem that uses extensive personification is
“Schizophrenia”. In an extended metaphor the
house is personified as someone being torn apart
of even driven mad by the fighting among the
family members inhabiting it.

16. Puns = play on words
s A pun involves playful use of words that have more
than one meaning or sound very similar to other
words.
s “Carnal Knowledge” is a pun meaning knowing about
meat and having sex.
s “Marks” means grades, and the wounds caused by
getting these grades
s “The neighbors said it was a madhouse”
– Can be a metaphor for a house with crazy people in it
(insane asylum) or the house itself has been driven mad.

17. Metonymy
s Substitution: cause for effect, container for
contained, something closely associated with
something else with thing itself
– The king could be referred to as “the crown”
– “Doublet and hose should show itself courageous to the
petticoat” = men should act courageously in front of
women
– “The pen is mightier than the sword”= it is easier to
persuade through writing than through force
– “Detroit opposed the new emission standards” Detroit =
the city where most American car manufacturers have
their headquarters so here it stands for the auto industry
s Alternate definition: “to convey the intangible in
terms of the tangible by substitution”
– “the heart” for love, “tears” for sorrow

18. Synecdoche
s Part is used to signify the whole:
– Child is “another mouth to feed”
– Ten workers are “ten hands “
– “He belongs behind bars.”
s Whole for a part
– “Germany invaded Poland.”
s By some definitions, synecdoche is viewed as a
special case of metonymy. They can be hard to tell
apart.

19. Synecdoche/metonymy
s “Her heart was learning to lie down forever”
(heart=dog; “lie down forever” stands for
dying.)
s “All pajamas and running noses” (both stand
for children)
s “We longed for burnt wood” (stands for fire)
s “. . . Rage. . . Walked in the ironlike black coat
before him” (coat for father) (and father is the
personification of rage)—This line is from
“Barn Burning.”

20. Hyperbole = exaggeration
s “The whiskey on your breath could
make a small boy dizzy”
s “Men marched asleep”
s “A mountain of beans”

21. Understatement=saying less than
you mean
s “No one ever thanked him”
– When the poet says no one ever thanked
the father for warming the house, it seems
to mean that no one appreciated anything
he did.
s “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair”
– The implication is that it’s been the
extreme opposite

22. Oxymoron and paradox
s Paradox is a self-contradictory
statement that is nevertheless true
– “It was the house that suffered most”
s An oxymoron is the combination of
contradictory words
– Sweet sorrow
– Jumbo shrimp
– Deceitful candor