Blogger #28 - Daniel Varushev - Period 5 - 4/6/2021 - Day B

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

Do Now: 

Complete the following:Love is…

The class starts off with a do now asking what love is. The question asks us to describe what love means to us. On the same slide there is a picture of two birds with the quote “love is in the air” This quote is a metaphor meaning that somebody is experiencing love, or surrounded by it. I wrote love is on my mind. Love is on my mind is a metaphor that means a person is thinking about love.

Vocabulary: 

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

A metaphor is like a simile but compares two things without using like or as.

Extended Metaphor is a metaphor developed over several lines or throughout a poem.

Spirit reading: 

For spirit reading the class read a story called “Poetry for everyday life” The poem talked about different types of metaphors being used. The poem brought light to the fact about how often we use metaphors without even knowing it. For example “Economies don’t really gain traction, like a tractor. Momentum doesn’t literally get snuffed out, like a cigarette.” These two short, normal sentences contain 4 different metaphors. The poem also claims that the reason people use metaphors is so much is because “Most of us are not very good at thinking about abstractions or spiritual states, so we rely on concrete or spatial metaphors to do the job.” This quote means that people find it hard to explain feelings, so they have to rely on metaphors to convey them. Another reason for metaphors is because “Most of us are not good at understanding new things, so we grasp them imperfectly by relating them metaphorically to things that already exist.” Metaphors help compare two existing things to help you understand an unknown concept.

Teamwork

For teamwork our class read the poems “Mother to Son” and “The Rose That Grew from Concrete”

Poem #1

“Mother to Son”

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.

Don't you set down on the steps.

'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.

There are a lot of important parts in this poem, so I had to separate the highlights with different colors.

The poem describes how difficult life is by using extended metaphors. The two questions assigned for team work were “What extended metaphor is used in the poem?” and “Look specifically at the final stanza: what is the mother’s message to her son?” For the first question, I said that the extended metaphor is comparing life to a staircase. This poem describes life, like a staircase with debris, a wooden board with torn tacks, and places where there is no carpet on the floor. For the second question, the final stanza of the poem the mother tells her son to never give up because giving up will only make things worse in the long run. The poem states “Don't you set down on the steps.Cause you finds it's kinder hard.”

Poem #2

The second poem was a poem from famous musician Tupac

The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Did you hear about the rose that grew

from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature's law is wrong it

learned to walk without 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 song uses an extended metaphor about how Tupac escaped poverty despite everything holding him back. In this story, the rose represents a person succeeding.

Final Question

At the end, the final question asks to compare the two poems. The comparisons I found between “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” and “Mother to Son” are metaphors. In “Mother to Son,” the poet compares the mother's life with the crystal staircase suggesting that life isn’t as clear, beautiful, and smooth as crystal. What's more, the crystal symbolizes wealth and it contrasts with the mother living in poverty. In “The Rose that Grew from Concrete,” the poet also uses an extended metaphor in his writing. He uses the rose growing through concrete to show how he was able to survive and grow in a poor community. Both poems effectively use metaphors to show that there are choices in life that people have to make wisely.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this lesson helped me better understand metaphors. I now can better understand the meaning behind a certain metaphor and now realize how important metaphors are in everyday conversation. Many people assume poetry is the only place where figurative language is used, but that is not true, it took reading about how many metaphors a person uses in a single sentence to truly understand that.