Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays
Some...
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. - Russell Beland, Springfield
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. - Sue Lin Chong, Washington
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. - Russell Beland, Springfield
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. - Unknown
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. - Jack Bross, Chevy Chase
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can. - Wayne Goode, Madison,AL
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. - Russell Beland, Springfield
The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play. - Barbara Fetherolf, Alexandria
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River. - Brian Broadus, Charlottesville
The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of "Jeopardy!" - Jean Sorensen, Herndon
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. - Jerry Pannullo, Kensington
It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before. - Marian Carlsson, Lexington
7 comments:
OMG, these kids are so much more articulate than the university kids I teach--seriously, dude!
Maybe some of them were done on purpose. But I still laughed!
In the book I'm reading, The Tell-Tale Brain, the ability to understand metaphor is uniquely human, or at least it's thought to be. When people experience a stroke in certain areas of the brain, they no longer get metaphors. If you recited Shakespeare's "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun" to them, they would think that Juliet was actually a sun, not that she was beautiful or radiant.
That's interesting about metaphor as possibly uniquely human (I've learned to doubt comments like that, given how much we've learned about animal intelligence in the last,say, 20-25 yrs. On the other hand, that's interesting and kind of strange about strokes & metaphor (or probably other linguistic non-literal constructions). I did just do a quick search on whether any animals could understand metaphor, but only came up with metaphors about animals.
It's all so interesting...
You might enjoy this then, Melinda. It's another excerpt from Ramachandran's book:
"Only humans, as far as we know, can use humor and analogy, although here we are in a gray area: the elusive boundary between thought and language.
When an alpha male ape makes a genital display to intimidate a rival into submission, is this analogous to the metaphor "F----k you" that humans use to insult one another? I wonder. But even so, this limited kind of metaphor falls far short of puns and poems, or of Tagore's description of the Taj Mahal as a "teardrop on the cheek of time." Here again is that mysterious boundary between language and thought."
That's only a limited metaphor from *our* point of view as humans--very anthropocentric. But thanks for the extra citations--appreciate it! Food for thought.
Must say, it was an eye-opening example. It came from out of the blue.
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