Blogger #7 - Jasmine Cherng - Period 9 - 11/17/20 - Day C - Freshman 2021

 Blogger #7 - Jasmine Cherng - Period 9 - 11/17/20 - Day C - Freshman 2021

Aim: How are metaphors used by writers to send meanings to readers?

Do Now: Complete the Following: Love is_____________________

This Do Now encouraged students to come up with a metaphor to describe or compare something  to love. With an activity like this all answers are correct because love is subjective. Your opinion on what you would compare love to would be based on personal experience. For me, I wrote that love is scary because I know it can cause people to be impulsive, which can lead to a series of unprecedented events.

Class Notes:

The lesson  began with the more elevated definition of a metaphor.

Metaphor: The distinct comparison where one thing or idea substitutes for another.

It’s a figure of speech that develops a comparison which is different from a simile.

Note: It often uses the form of the verb, “To Be.” (is, am, are, was, were, will be, being, been,

could, should, would, has, have, having, had, may, might, must)

❖ i.e. we do not use “like” or “as” to develop comparison in a metaphor.

❖ It actually makes an implicit or hidden comparison and not an explicit one

This more advanced definition of metaphor can be used to better describe what a metaphor actually is rather than saying it's a comparison without using like or as, a definition that was probably taught to you in elementary school. 

The class then watched a video from the Youtube channel, The Red Room Company that was used to clear up any confusion on what a metaphor is and how it is used. 

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4gMKZKU3lE&ab_channel=TheRedRoomCompany

We were then given the definition of an extended metaphor:

An extended metaphor is developed over several lines or throughout a poem. If it helps

to have an example, consider Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, Langston Hughes’

“Mother to Son”

An example of an extended metaphor that Mrs. Peterson provided for us is shown below. This extended metaphor compared the sand in the hourglass dropping down, which represented time, to the time we have in life. Life is very commonly compared to time and some people want to make sure that they accomplish something meaningful before their time runs out. 

Following this, we read the article, “Poetry for Everyday Life” by David Brooks. The article’s main purpose is to bring to our attention that metaphors are used all the time in our daily lives and most of the time we don’t even realize. As the world grows in complexity, we tend to rely on metaphors to grasp at what we can understand. Brooks mentions how we use food metaphors to describe ideas, how we use health metaphors to describe relationships, and how we use liquid metaphors to describe money. It is interesting to think about how metaphors are used as a way to understand things that are too complicated to us and we when become accustomed to recognizing metaphors, we become overall more skilled thinkers. 

LINK: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/opinion/12brooks.html

After reading the article we looked at the extended metaphor, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson. The class discussed the question, “how does the author utilize extended metaphors to express a theme or message to the reader?”. One student said that the extended metaphor compared hope to the freedom that birds have. The message of this poem was expressed throughout the poem trying to show that people should persevere through hardships to reach their goals. Another message that can be taken from this is that it doesn't cost you anything to have hope, which is presented in the last stanza in the lines, “Yet, never, in extremity, it asked a crumb of me”.

TEAM GROUP WORK

In breakout rooms, groups read the two poems, “Mother to Son” by Langston Huges and “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” by Tupac Shakar and answered a series of questions.

The first poem represents a mother’s message to her son telling him to always face the hardships in the way of reaching his goals just as she did. The poem compared life to staircases. A crystal staircase represents the perfect life, where there are no obstacles and a staircase with nails and splinters represents life with hardships and hindrance. The mother’s message is that if she has lived life with hardships then her son can do the same. It is important to work through the things life throws at you as strength and determination will get you to where you want to go. 

The second poem was recognized to be written by famous rapper, Tupac. The poem talks about how a rose grows out from a crack in the concrete, defying the laws of nature. Figuratively, the poem represents Tupac’s upbringing as he built himself up to fame even though he grew up in a tough neighborhood that wasn’t expected to breed success. We can say that the rose represents Tupac himself and the concrete represents the doubt people in his community had on him. The rose growing out of the concrete is a metaphor for Tupac to represent himself facing hardships and making a name for himself. 

At the end of the lesson, the class was instructed to compare the messages of the two poems. The common themes of the two poems were to always persist through obstacles that might come your way. Both poems also use physical objects to describe the mentality of people trying to overcome adversity. The first poem compares stairs to hardships and climbing those stairs will show you overcoming them and the second poem compares the doubt of being successful to a rose growing out of something that is naturally impossible. The two poems give significant importance to the message, never give up. 

Reflection:

I think metaphors are an extremely powerful way to convey our thoughts and are used more commonly than one would think. It can simply be used to simplify the complex ideas of our everyday world. We learned how to identify them and how to better understand what they are trying to tell us when analyzing poems. The very skill of understanding metaphors can open our eyes to a whole other way of thinking and perceiving. I think metaphors are the most important figure of speech because it is so unique and can be used in almost every context.