I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like (2 page)

Shakespeare might have expressed the thought in a formal analogy
(people are to the world as actors are to a stage)
, but he went with a metaphor instead. He goes on to describe people as actors and then—true to the root sense of the word—
carried
the metaphor further by referring to exits, entrances, and the many parts played in a lifetime. In the rest of the passage, he went on to describe the seven ages of man, but he could have pursued the metaphor in many other ways. He might have talked about people being well suited—or miscast—for their roles. He might have contrasted lead actors with those in supporting roles. He might have compared award-winning performances with forgettable ones. Once
world
is metaphorically transformed into
stage
, then all of the attributes of the
target domain
(stage) can be applied back to
the original
source domain
(world). Notice how Richard Lederer leaps from one conceptual domain to another in this metaphorical gem from
Get Thee to a Punnery
(1988):

 

Puns are a three-way circus of words:
words clowning, words teetering on tightropes,
words swinging from tent-tops,
words thrusting their heads into the mouths of lions.

 

A metaphor is a kind of magical mental changing room—where one thing, for a moment, becomes another, and in that moment is seen in a whole new way. It's like watching a man imitating a woman. We often learn more about the man in the few moments he acts like a woman than we can after years of observing him behave as a man. As soon as something old is seen in a new way, it stimulates a torrent of new thoughts and associations, almost as if a mental floodgate has been lifted. Bernard Malamud put it this way:

 

I love metaphor.
It provides two loaves where there seems to be one.
Sometimes it throws in a whole load of fish.

 

Throughout history, certain rare individuals have demonstrated a special ability to discern a relationship between things that initially seem quite alien to each other. The talent was recognized nearly 2,500 years ago by Aristotle, who observed in
Poetics:

 

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.
This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius,
for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblance.

 

While I disagree that a command of metaphor cannot be imparted by the
right teacher, I agree that there is a certain talent—even a kind of genius—involved in finding something in common between very different domains of life. Robert Frost said it well:

 

An idea is a feat of association,
and the height of it is a good metaphor.

 

A keen
eye for resemblance
, to use Aristotle's phrase, is a rare gift, but it may also be an essential skill for a person who is trying to express a powerful idea in an original way. And once people make a connection between two different domains, they often take the initial metaphor and tweak it with an additional thought, leaving us with truly memorable observations:

 

The world is a book,
and those who do not travel read only one page.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress;
when I tire of one, I spend the night with the other.

ANTON CHEKHOV

Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System
that can always be relied on
to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

Observations like these—and many, many more to be found later—may help you appreciate another observation from Aristotle, this from his classic
Rhetoric:

 

It is metaphor above all else that gives
clearness, charm, and distinction to the style.

 

So far, we've examined analogies and metaphors. But when it comes to making connections between dissimilar things, there's a third major player in the drama.

SIMILE

Webster's New World Dictionary
defines
simile
this way:

Simile
and the related word
similar
derive from the Latin
similis
, meaning “like.” The word has an even longer history in English than
metaphor
, making its first written appearance in English in 1393 in William Langland's
Piers Plowman.
Similes share with analogies and metaphors the goal of relating one thing to another, but they do it in a slightly different way. Look at these quotations:

 

Books are like imprisoned souls
till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

SAMUEL BUTLER

Books…are like lobster shells,
we surround ourselves with 'em,
then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind,
as evidence of our earlier stage of development.

DOROTHY L. SAYERS

No furniture is so charming as books.

SYDNEY SMITH

These observations help us see books—among our most familiar possessions—in new ways. And because of the words
like
and
as
, they are classified as similes.

In many observations, the presence or absence of only one word separates a simile from a metaphor. An ancient Chinese proverb—written when many books were available in smaller editions—once offered the lovely idea that a book was like a portable garden we could take with us in our travels. The proverb, as usually presented, is a perfect simile, but by deleting one word it is transformed from one figure of speech into another:

In a simile, there is an
explicit
comparison—one thing is said to be
like
something else. In a metaphor, there is no comparison because the two things are treated as identical (an
implicit
comparison, it is often said). Similes are similar to—but distinctly different from—metaphors, and they can be equally impressive:

 

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Justice is like a train that's nearly always late.

YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO

While some people make a big deal out of the difference between similes and metaphors, there is a great deal of truth in a joke that has long been popular among teachers of English:

 

A simile is like a metaphor.

 

In his 1955 book on style, the poet and critic F. L. Lucas put it this way:
“The simile sets two ideas side by side; in the metaphor they become superimposed.” Here's a quick structural overview:

In addition to
like
or
as
, several other words and expressions indicate the presence of a simile. A common one is
than
, as in “faster than a speeding bullet” or “sharper than a serpent's tooth,” as in this classic line from Shakespeare's
King Lear
:

Here are some more expressions that signal the use of a simile:

 

 

In the world of figurative language, similes have long taken a back seat to the more glamorous metaphor. Aristotle preferred metaphors over similes, and language snobs have slavishly followed his example for centuries. But what similes lack in prestige they make up for in frequency. Here is just a sampling of similes that are a staple of everyday speech:

 

 

Expressions like these are often the first things that come to mind when people are asked to provide a simile. And while they may have been quite original when first employed, they've now become
clichés
. It is likely that these stale, trite, and hackneyed expressions are responsible for diminishing the reputation of similes in the minds of so many people.

Similes do not have to be bland and uninspired, however, and in the hands of gifted writers they can be raised to the level of an art form. John Updike once wrote:

 

Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.

 

The observation illustrates one of the things I love most about metaphorical language. When imaginatively conceived they're like beautiful
word paintings
. In Updike's observation, we can easily visualize a pastry cart piled high with a variety of beautifully presented literary delicacies. Gathering around the cart are a group of swine, clearly out of place in a swanky establishment. The pigs—well known for favoring
slop
but willing to eat just about anything—are clearly incapable of appreciating the quality of the treats they're about to devour.

Another unforgettable
word picture
comes from Stephen King. With grand dreams of ultimately becoming a writer, he took a job teaching high school English after graduating from college. He didn't last long. Exhausted after planning lessons and correcting students' papers, he was sapped of any energy he might have devoted to writing. He described the experience vividly:

 

Teaching school is like
having jumper cables hooked to your brain,
draining all the juice out of you.

 

While similes are generally contrasted with metaphors, they actually have more in common with analogies. Indeed, when a simile is slightly extended, it has an
A is to B as C is to D
structure that makes it virtually indistinguishable from an analogy. This has resulted in much confusion. For example, in the
American Heritage Dictionary
, Shakespeare's “So are you to my thoughts as food to life” is given as an example of a simile. In my mind, though, I see Shakespeare identifying a proportionate relationship between two sets of things—
you to my thoughts
and
food to life
—and view it as an analogy.

Some similes are deliciously entertaining, as when Norman Mailer compared his regular novels with the ones that had been adapted to the film world:

 

Novels are like wives; you don't talk about them.
But movies are different; they're like mistresses, and you can brag a bit.

 

Some are highly unusual but oddly compelling. In
The Book on Writing
(2003), Paula La Rocque quotes Roger Angell writing about Barry Bonds:

 

Bonds…stands in the middle of the Giants' batting order
like an aneurysm.

 

Like an aneurysm?
Well, think about it for a moment. Whether you love or loathe major league baseball's all-time home-run champ, Angell's simile perfectly describes what I have seen for years when Bonds is at the plate—a player who is about to explode.

Some similes are educational as well as entertaining, making us wish that more teachers would make them a part of the instructional process:

 

A dependent clause is like a dependent child:
incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.

WILLIAM SAFIRE