Figurative LanguageWords Like Sparks

How might you describe a big, old tree?

As a tall, woody plant with a brown trunk and limbs covered with green leaves? Or as something more . . . ?

Where I go to read and think, as comforting and familiar as my grandmother’s kitchen table

A shelter from cares, its leafy canopy shielding me from the outside world

A dear old friend who welcomes me with open arms

The one unchanging thing in a frantic, fast-paced world

© W

illia

m M

anni

ng/C

orbi

s

What Is Figurative Language?

Figurative language, or a figure of speech, describes one thing in terms of something else and is not meant to be taken on a literal level.

•Figurative language almost always involves a comparison of two things that are basically dissimilar.

•Figurative language gives writing an imaginative spark that engages readers in the writer’s ideas.

Kinds of Figurative Language

Figurative language includes

•simile

•metaphor

•personification

•symbol

Simile

A simile makes an explicit comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, than, or resembles.

Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart,As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start; from “The Day is Done” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Metaphor

A metaphor makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of such specific words of comparison as like, as, than, or resembles.

Types of Metaphor

There are several types of metaphors:

•directly stated metaphor

•implied metaphor

•extended metaphor

•dead metaphor

•mixed metaphor

Types of Metaphor

•A directly stated metaphor states the comparison explicitly.

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,But life without meaning is the tortureOf restless and vague desire—

It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. from “George Gray” by Edward Lee

Masters

Types of Metaphor

•An implied metaphor does not state explicitly the two terms of the comparison. Instead, a reader must infer the comparison based on the details the writer provides.

The black crop of the night is growing

from “Full Powers” by Pablo Neruda, translated by Ben Belitt and Alastair ReidFrom “Full Powers” from A New Decade (Poems: 1958-1967) by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid. English translation copyright © 1969 by Alastair

Reid. Reproduced by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Types of Metaphor

•An extended metaphor is extended or developed over a number of lines or with several examples. A writer may use both direct and implied metaphors to develop an extended metaphor.

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip. . . .

From Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

Types of Metaphor

•A dead metaphor has been used so often that the comparison is no longer vivid.

•the dog days of summer

•having a blast

•a bundle of joy

•A mixed metaphor fails to make a logical comparison because its mixed terms are visually or imaginatively incompatible.

•The president is a lame duck who is running out of gas.

Personification

Personification is a type of metaphor in which an idea, object, or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

Symbol

A symbol is a person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and also stands for something more.

•A symbol often points toward the theme of a work.

The train whistle still wails its ancient soundbut when it goes away, shrinking back from the walls of the brain,it takes something different with it every time.

from “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Published by Far Corner Books, Portland, OR. Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

Identify which kind of figurative language each item uses.

1. The guard was a statue—still and imposing.

2. The playground called the children out of the house.

3. The war was over, thought the captain as he walked past the battlefield and the sun rose.

4. Jane plodded through the dark passages of her past.

5. After his first 5K, Sebastian felt as exhausted as a marathoner.

What Have You Learned?

Simile Metaphor Personification Symbol

Metaphor

Metaphor

Symbol

Personification

Simile

The End