Metaphor

Metaphor Definition
A Metaphor is a figure of speech that makes an implicit, implied, or
hidden comparison between two things that are unrelated, but which share
some common characteristics. In other words, a resemblance of two
contradictory or different objects is made based on a single or some common
characteristics.

In simple English, when you portray a person, place, thing, or an action

as being something else, even though it is not actually that “something else,”
you are speaking metaphorically. The following phrase is an example of
metaphor, “My brother is the black sheep of the family,” because he is neither
a sheep nor is he black. However, we can use this comparison to describe an
association of a black sheep with that person. A black sheep is an
unusual animal, which typically stays away from the herd, and the person
being described shares similar characteristics.

However, the metaphor figure of speech is different from a simile, because we

do not use “like” or “as” to develop a comparison in metaphor poems
and metaphor sentences. It makes an implicit or hidden comparison and not
an explicit one.

Let’s now take a look at some common examples of meptahors.

Common Speech Examples of Metaphor

So, what is a Metaphor? Most of us think of a metaphor as a device used in
songs or poems only, and that it has nothing to do with our everyday life. In
fact, all of us in our routine life speak, write, and think in metaphors. We
cannot avoid them. Metaphors are sometimes constructed through our
common language, and they are called “conventional metaphors.”

Let’s explore a few metaphor meaning and examples such as calling a person
a “night owl,” or an “early bird,” or saying “life is a journey,” are common
metaphor examples which are heard and understood by most of us. Below are
some more conventional metaphors we often hear in our daily lives:

 My brother was boiling mad. (This implies he was too angry.)

 The assignment was a breeze. (This implies that the assignment was
not difficult.)
  It is going to be clear skies from now on. (This implies that clear skies
are not a threat and life is going to be without hardships)
 The skies of his future began to darken. (Darkness is a threat;
therefore, this implies that the coming times are going to be hard for
him.)
 Her voice is music to his ears. (This implies that her voice makes him
feel happy)
 He saw the soul of dust when passing through the dust storm.
 Chaos is the breeding ground of order.
 War is the mother of all battles.
 Her dance is a great poem.
 A new road to freedom passes through this valley of death.
 My conscience is my barometer.
 His white face shows his concern.
 His kisses are like roses.
 He married her to have a trophy wife.
 Laughter is the best medicine.
 Words are daggers when spoken in anger.
 His words are pearls of wisdom.

Metaphor Examples in Literature

Metaphors are used in all types of literature, but not often to the degree they
are used in poetry. This is because metaphor poem is meant to communicate
complex images and feelings to readers, and metaphors often state the
comparisons most emotively. Now that we know the definition of metaphor,
let’s take a look at some examples.

Example #1: The Sun Rising (By John Donne)

“She’s all states, and all princes, I …”

John Donne, a metaphysical poet, was well-known for his abundant use of
metaphors throughout his poetical works. In his well-known work, The Sun
Rising, the speaker scolds the sun for waking him and his beloved. Among the
most evocative metaphors in literature, he explains “She is all states, and all
princes, I.” This line demonstrates the speaker’s belief that he and his beloved
are richer than all states, kingdoms, and rulers in the entire world because of
the love that they share.
Example #2: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day (By William Shakespeare)

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade …”

William Shakespeare was the best exponent of metaphors, having made

wide-ranging use of them throughout his works. Sonnet 18, also known
as Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day, is an extended
metaphor between the love of the speaker and the fairness of the summer
season. He writes that “thy eternal summer,” here taken to mean the love of
the subject, “shall not fade.”

Example #3: When I Have Fears (By John Keats)

“Before high-pil’d books, in charact’ry

Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;”

The great Romantic poet John Keats suffered great losses in his life — the
death of his father in an accident and the deaths of his mother and brother
through tuberculosis. When Keats himself began displaying signs of
tuberculosis at the age of 22, he wrote When I Have Fears, a poem rich with
metaphors concerning life and death. In the lines above, he employs a double
metaphor. Writing poetry is implicitly compared with reaping and sowing, and
both these acts represent the emptiness of a life unfulfilled creatively.

Example #4: Vestiges (By Van Jordan)

“… and jump in the sea and say, follow me,

and know you would. The sea is cold
and it’s deep, too, I’d joke,

standing at the edge of the boat’s bow.

A wind breathes across the sea,
joining gently the edges of time.”

Just spot different metaphors in these six lines by Van Jordan. This is the
“sea” of time. This is an extended metaphor that is further expanded to its
feature of coldness, depth, and then edges and voyage through it.
Example #5: The Sun Rising (By John Donne)

“Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?”

This is another example of a good metaphor where the sun is being called
a fool by John Done, who is famous for his use of weird metaphors.

Example #6: Paradise Lost, Book 1 (By John Milton)

“Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount”

This is a good metaphor by Milton, from his epic Paradise Lost. Here, Milton
has compared his poetry to a dove.

Example #7: i carry your heart with me (By E. E. Cummings)

“…and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you …”

Here E. E. Cummings has compared his beloved to the moon, as well as to

the sun. This is another good metaphor by a modern poet.

Example #8: The Storm (By Kate Chopin)

“Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they
seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life’s mystery.”

Just check the excellence of using a metaphor in just one sentence. The
second one is its extension.

Example #9: The Call of Cthulhu (By H.P. Lovecraft)

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity,
and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining
in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing
together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality,
and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the
revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.””
Lovecraft has beautifully used metaphors to describe the situation in this
paragraph. Just read the underlined phrases to see this metaphorical beauty.

Metaphor Meaning and Function

From the above arguments, explanations, and examples, we can easily infer
the function of metaphors; both in our daily lives and in a piece of literature.
Using appropriate metaphors appeals directly to the senses of listeners or
readers, sharpening their imaginations to comprehend what is being
communicated to them. Moreover, it gives a life-like quality to our
conversations and the characters of fiction or poetry. Metaphors are also ways
of thinking, offering the listeners and the readers fresh ways of examining
ideas and viewing the world.

2nd GLANCE

A metaphor is a trope or figure of speech in which an implied comparison is

made between two unlike things that actually have something in common. A
metaphor expresses the unfamiliar (the tenor) in terms of the familiar
(the vehicle). When Neil Young sings, "Love is a rose," the word "rose" is the
vehicle for the term "love," the tenor.

The word metaphor itself is a metaphor, coming from a Greek term meaning to
"transfer" or "carry across." Metaphors "carry" meaning from one word, image,
idea, or situation to another.

Conventional Metaphors
Some people think of metaphors as little more than the sweet stuff of songs and
poems—such as love is a jewel, a rose, or a butterfly. But people use metaphors in
everyday writing and speaking. You can't avoid them: They are baked right into
the English language.

Calling a person a "night owl" or an "early bird" is an example of a

common or conventional metaphor—one that most native speakers readily
understand. Some metaphors are so prevalent that you may not even notice that
they are metaphors. Take the familiar metaphor of life as a journey. You can find
it in advertising slogans:

"Life is a journey, travel it well."

—United Airlines
"Life is a journey. Enjoy the Ride."
—Nissan
"The journey never stops."
—American Express

Many other categories of metaphors enhance the English language.

Other Types
Metaphor types range from conceptual and visual to dead metaphors, which lose
their impact and meaning due to overuse. (You might say, metaphorically, they
are done to death.) A specific type of metaphor is even used in psychological
counseling. Following are the main types of this figure of speech:

Absolute: a metaphor in which one of the terms (the tenor) can't be readily
distinguished from the other (the vehicle). Your Dictionary notes that these
metaphors compare two things that have no obvious connection but are joined to
make a point such as: “She is doing a tightrope walk with her grades this
semester.” Of course, she is not a circus performer, but the absolute metaphor—
tightrope walk—clearly makes the point about the precarious nature of her
academic standing.

Complex: a metaphor in which the literal meaning is expressed through more

than one figurative term (a combination of primary metaphors). The
website Changing Minds says that a complex metaphor occurs where a simple
metaphor is based on a "secondary metaphoric element," such as using the term
"light" to indicate understanding, as in the sentence "He threw light on the
subject." Changing Minds also gives these examples:

 That lends weight to the argument.

 They stood alone, frozen statues on the plain.
 The ball happily danced into the net.

Conceptual: a metaphor in which one idea (or conceptual domain)

is understood in terms of another—for example:

 You're wasting my time.

 This gadget will save you hours.
 I don't have the time to give you.

In the last sentence, for example, you can't actually "have" or "give" time, but the
concept is clear from the context.
Creative: an original comparison that calls attention to itself as a figure
of speech. It is also known as a poetic, literary, novel, or unconventional
metaphor, such as:

"Her tall black-suited body seemed to carve its way through the crowded room."
—Josephine Hart, "Damage"
"Fear is a slinking cat I find / Beneath the lilacs of my mind."
—Sophie Tunnell, "Fear"
"The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough."
—Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"

A body can't "carve" anything, fear is not a slinking cat (and no mind contains
lilacs), and faces are not petals, but the creative metaphors paint vivid pictures in
the reader's mind.

Extended: a comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a

series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem. Many lyrical writers use
extended metaphors, such as this drawn-out circus image by a best-selling
author:

"Bobby Holloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus. Currently,

I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns
cartwheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step
back, leave the main tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down."
—Dean Koontz, "Seize the Night"

Dead: a figure of speech that has lost its force and imaginative effectiveness
through frequent use, such as:

"Kansas City is oven hot, dead metaphor or no dead metaphor."

—Zadie Smith, "On the Road: American Writers and Their Hair"

Mixed: a succession of incongruous or ludicrous comparisons—for example:

"We'll have a lot of new blood holding gavels in Washington."

—Former U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), in the Savannah Morning News, Nov. 3,
2010
"That's awfully thin gruel for the right wing to hang their hats on."
— MSNBC, Sept. 3, 2009
Primary: A basic intuitively understood metaphor—such
as knowing is seeing or time is motion—that may be combined with other
primary metaphors to produce complex metaphors.

Root: An image, narrative, or fact that shapes an individual's perception of the

world and interpretation of reality, such as:

"Is the whole universe a perfect machine? Is the society an organism?"

—Kaoru Yamamoto, "Too Clever for Our Own Good: Hidden Facets of Human
Evolution"

Submerged: a type of metaphor in which one of the terms (either the vehicle or
tenor) is implied rather than stated explicitly:

Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman"

"The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas."

Therapeutic: a metaphor used by therapists to assist clients in the process of

personal transformation. Getselfhelp.co.uk, a British website that offers
psychotherapy resources and information, gives this example of passengers on a
bus:

"You can be in the driving seat, whilst all the passengers (thoughts) are being
critical, abusive, intrusive, distracting, and shouting directions, or sometimes just
plain nonsense. You can allow those passengers to shout and chatter noisily,
whilst keeping your attention focused on the road ahead, heading towards your
goal or value."

The metaphor aims to help present someone seeking help with a way to stay
focused on what's important by shutting out distracting, negative thoughts.

Visual: the representation of a person, place, thing, or idea by way of a

visual image that suggests a particular association or point of similarity. Modern
advertising relies heavily on visual metaphors.

For example, in a magazine ad a few years ago for the banking firm Morgan
Stanley, a man is pictured bungee jumping off a cliff. Two words serve to explain
this visual metaphor: A dotted line from the jumper's head points to the word
"You," while another line from the end of the bungee cord points to "Us." The
metaphorical message—of the safety and security provided by the firm in times of
risk—is conveyed through a single dramatic image.
The Value of Metaphors
We need metaphors, James Grant wrote in his article "Why Metaphor Matters"
published on OUPblog, a website operated by Oxford University Press. Without
metaphors, "many many truths would be inexpressible and unknowable." Grant
noted:

"Take Gerard Manley Hopkins’s exceptionally powerful metaphor of despair:

'selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and sheterless, / thoughts against thoughts in
groans grind.' How else could precisely this kind of mood be expressed?
Describing how things appear to our senses is also thought to require metaphor,
as when we speak of the silken sound of a harp, the warm colours of a Titian, and
the bold or jolly flavour of a wine."

Science advances by the use of metaphors, Grant added—of the mind as a

computer, of electricity as a current, or of the atom as a solar system. When using
metaphors to enrich writing, consider how these figures of speech are more than
just ornaments or decorative accessories. Metaphors are also ways of thinking,
offering readers (and listeners) fresh ways of examining ideas and viewing the
world.

Metaphors in "Romeo and Juliet"

William Shakespeare uses a metaphor in "Romeo and Juliet" when Lady Capulet
compares Paris to a book. Two other examples occur when Romeo compares Juliet to
the sun and when Paris compares Juliet to a flower and her tomb to a bridal bed.

In Act I, Scene 3, Lady Capulet describes Paris as a book in an extended metaphor

that includes the words, "This precious book of love, this unbound lover." In Act II,
Scene 2, Romeo says of Juliet, when he spots her on the balcony, "What light through
yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." In Act V, Scene 3, Paris
goes to the tomb to mourn Juliet and says, "Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed
I strew."

Example #1

“Peer’d forth the golden window of the east…”

(I. i. 121)
In this exquisitely graphic metaphor, Benvolio is comparing the startling sun to
a spectacular golden window of the east. This colorful comparison serves to
emphasize the exotic energy and brightness of the sun. Since the sun rises in
the east, the metaphor of a window implies that the sun or the emergence of a
new day acts as a wonderful opening to magnificent opportunities and new
beginnings. It also emphasizes the life-enhancing qualities of the sun.

Example #2

“This precious book of love, this unbound lover,

To beautify him only lacks a cover.”

(I. iii. 93-94)

In this vividly evocative metaphor, Lady Capulet uses the metaphor of a book
to highlight the depth and beauty of Paris’ character as well as to emphasize
the countless benefits that can be derived by a marital union with him. In an
attempt to persuade her daughter, Juliet, to marry Paris, Lady Capulet
maintains that the privileges of marrying Paris are many. He is like a
flawlessly written book only in need of a cover. By comparing Paris to a book,
Lady Capulet is implying that only Juliet can serve to complement Paris’
unique personality that exudes love.

Example #3

“My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

(I. v. 106-107)

This heartfelt and sentimental metaphorical expression is delivered by Romeo

and compares Romeo’s trembling lips to two devoted pilgrims eager to kiss
their holy object of worship. Hence, this graphic comparison implies that
Romeo perceives Juliet as a demi-goddess and regards himself as her blind
follower – a follower whose lips are desperate to plant a passionately
reverential kiss on their holy shrine.

Example #4

“It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be”
(II. ii. 125-126)

In this particular quote, Juliet uses lightning as a metaphor for love in order to
emphasize the unpredictable aspect of love. Delivered during
the famous balcony scene, this visual metaphor serves to reinforce Juliet’s
premise about love’s transience, inconsistency, and abruptness. From a
dramatic perspective, this comparison of Romeo’s ardent expression of love
with the fast flicker of lightning highlights Juliet’s maturity and her
understanding of the fact that pledges made in a moment of passion do not
always have an enduring quality.

Example #5

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.”

(II. ii. 2-3)

This verse is another beautiful exchange that takes place between Romeo
and Juliet during the famous balcony scene. In these beautiful and vivid
verses, Romeo compares Juliet to the sun. This metaphor implies that Romeo
perceives Juliet as being incredibly bright, radiant and glorious. Moreover, the
sun is regarded as the life-giving element of the universe. The comparison
between the sun and Juliet illustrates that Romeo sees Juliet as the
quintessential life-giving being.

Example #6

“O, I am Fortune’s fool!”

(III. i. 142)

Delivered by Romeo after his hasty killing of Tybalt, this verse highlights
Romeo’s remorse since he regards himself as a cruel victim of fate using the
metaphor of “fortune’s fool”. It is noteworthy that by equating himself to a
naïve individual who has been deceived and who commits a crime in a
moment of unblinking passion. Romeo is reinforcing the unthinking and
careless aspect of his personality – the one that seldom thinks before
committing an action. Moreover, this metaphor implies Romeo’s conviction in
the fact that sometimes fate deceives us in inconceivable ways.
Example #7

“Thy eyes’ windows fall…”

(IV. i. 102-103)

In this particular phrase, Friar Lawrence is comparing the drooping of Juliet’s

eyelids to the shutting of windows. This metaphor implies that the sleeping
potion will have the same effect on Juliet’s eyes as the closing of
windows. Since windows provide visual access to the outside world, the
falling or closing of Juliet’s eyelids highlights that the drinking potion will
prevent Juliet from observing or viewing the world around her.

Example #8

“Death is my son-in-law; Death is my heir.”

(IV. v. 44)

In this tragic verse, Capulet uses the metaphors of son-in-law and heir to
emphasize how the specter of death incessantly haunts him and his loved
ones. After seeing Juliet deep asleep and mistaking her for the dead, Capulet
maintains that Juliet has been eternally wedded to the horrifying phenomenon
of death. Hence, Capulet’s only abiding legacy would be death.

Example #9

“The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade

To paly ashes…”

(IV. i. 101)

Delivered by Friar Lawrence, this verse highlights the death-like state Juliet
would be in after drinking the sleeping potion. By equating the color of Juliet’s
cheeks and lips with roses, the Friar is implying that the potion will induce
death-like symptoms thereby draining Juliet’s lips and cheeks of their rosy
hue. Moreover, the metaphor of ashes signifies that as a result of drinking the
potion, Juliet’s face will turn deathly-pale.

Example #10

“Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death…”

(V. iii. 45)

This metaphorical phrase is delivered by Romeo as he visits Juliet’s resting

place in the tomb. “Detestable maw” refers to the jaws of a hungry beast. By
equating the tomb to a deathly womb and the jaws of a petrifying beast,
Romeo is implying that a tomb is a place that merely harbors destruction,
decay, and death.