February 26, 2020
Cailyn Kitchens
Period 1
Freshmen Lit 2020
Aim: How are metaphors used by writers to send meaning to readers?
Do Now: Complete the following: Love is ____.
Our class came up with many answers to this prompt. One common answer was love is blind, a phrase being said for ages. It can be interpreted as loving someone regardless of how they look, or could also mean you could love someone so much that you disregard their faults, or do anything for them. Another answer was love is trust, because in a relationship you need to have faith in the other person, and without trust a relationship will fail. One last notable answer was love is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. This answer was inspired by the famous movie Forrest Gump, when Forrest says “life is like a box a chocolate, you never know what you’re going to get.” In summation, this prompt could be answered in many ways depending on what kind of person you are and your opinion on love.
Metaphor: figure of speech that develops a comparison which is different from a simile
- i.e. we don’t use “like” or “as” to develop comparison in a metaphor
- it actually makes an implicit or hidden comparison and not an explicit one
Extended Metaphor: developed over several lines or throughout a poem
One example of an extended metaphor is a comparison of life to an hourglass. A simple metaphor would just be to say life is an hourglass. An extended metaphor would be to say life is an hourglass, running out of sand. You start by tipping it over. As the sand runs to the other side, you try to figure out your path. You never know when the sand will run out. You just know that it will. So when it does will you be ready? This is an extended metaphor because it starts out as just a simple statement, life is an hourglass, but then is explained in depth over the next sentences or lines. Extended metaphors are important, especially as we will use them in the upcoming poems for our poem anthology.
The next activity we did was read and annotate “Poetry for Everyday Life” by David Brooks in The Opinion Pages, published on April 11, 2011. The article was about the use of metaphors in our everyday life, whether we realize it or not. One notable piece of information was that “linguistic research suggesting that people use a metaphor every 10 to 25 words.” Some common metaphors we use are food metaphors and health metaphors. The reason why we use metaphors is to help to relate to things we don’t understand fully, and if we are not the most sufficient in abstract thinking, metaphors help us build on that quality.
After, we read “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickenson and answered the question “How does the author utilize the extended metaphor to express a theme or message to the reader?”
Hope is the Thing with Feathers (by Emily Dickenson)
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune -- without the words,
And never stops at all,
“And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
“I’ve heard it in the chilliest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It never asked a crumb of me.”
Throughout the poem, is an extended metaphor comparing hope to a bird. It conveys the theme that hope is always there for you and follows you everywhere. For example, in the second stanza the poem states “And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird,” showing that nothing can destroy the bird, just like nothing can destroy hope.
We then went off with our groups to analyze two poems. The first was the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes.
Mother to Son (by Langston Hughes)
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 aclimbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now--
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
The extended metaphor here is “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” This is used to demonstrate the adversities and obstacles the mother faced in her life, and she had to persevere through them. The overall message is her telling her son that even when things get difficult and you feel like giving up, you have to keep working hard.
The second poem was “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” by Tupac Shakur.
The Rose That Grew from Concrete (by Tupac Shakur)
Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared
This extended metaphor was a rose growing through a crack in the concrete, with a message similar to the above poem. The rose represents hope, beauty, and life, while the concrete is a symbol of hard times. A rose growing through the concrete shows being able to find the light even in dark places, and breaking through.
We ended the lesson by discussing and comparing the two poems. In our groups, we talked about the similarity in central ideas with the poems we just read. After discussion, we wrote that both poems reveal that even in difficult times you can get through them by having hope and persevering. You can take a bad situation and make it better if you keep trying and work hard.
Summary: We use metaphors all the time without even knowing it. It helps us understand and relate to a topic better, and increases our cognitive abilities. An extended metaphor is a metaphor that is analyzed and explained throughout several lines in a poem. Some great examples of extended metaphors are in “Hope is the
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