Aim: How are metaphors used by writers to send meaning to readers?
Do now: Complete the following: Love is… ____
This is asking us what we believe love is, or what love means to us. It asks us to describe love, whether it be literal or figurative. On the right of the directions are a picture of two birds with the words “Love is in the air”, which means that to complete the do now, we can describe love using metaphors to convey our thoughts. I answered that love is in the air because sometimes you can sense the feeling of love coming off of others or your surroundings, and it feels very peaceful and nice, almost as if love travels through the air to make you feel better.
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An example of a place where love might be in the air is a dinner between two people, especially if they are going on a date. Of course, love is no physical thing in the air, but you can feel the love between two people sometimes like it is an aura around them.
Vocabulary
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.
This means that a metaphor sounds close to a simile, but has key distinctions that separate it from a simile. For example, in metaphors “like” or “as” are not used, but words like “To Be” or “is” are used to describe or compare things. Metaphors make hidden comparisons instead of explained comparisons. Metaphors are used to describe things, and can use words that would usually be
used to describe something else. For example, you can describe someone’s hair being a long and golden river.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4gMKZKU3lE → This video also explains this, giving more examples and establishing a concrete understanding of what metaphors are, with explanations on why to use metaphors, what they are, and creative visuals to make an interesting and informational video.
Extended Metaphor: An extended metaphor is a metaphor developed over a larger text. These can be throughout the whole poem. Extended metaphors tend to put a lot more effort and detail into expressing ideas or emotions using metaphors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3nDkXKDp0Y In this video, a woman explains extended metaphors, giving examples from several poems and pieces of literature, and explaining how they all contain extended metaphors very simply.
Spirit Reading
This text is called “Poetry for Everyday Life”, written by David Brooks. He talks about how much metaphors are used in life and communication, when we do not even realize it. For example, four metaphors were used in one sentence. The sentence is “Britain’s recovery from the worst recession in decades if gaining traction but confused economic data and high risk of hung Parliament could yet snuff out its momentum.” Metaphors are clearly seen in this sentence, like Britain’s recovery gaining traction. They use “gaining traction” to describe the speed of Britain’s recovery increasing. They also describe economic data as being confused, even though economic data cannot be confused because it is simply economic data. Brooks writes about how we use health metaphors to talk about marriage, or food metaphors to describe books. For example, a healthy marriage would be a good marriage that everybody is happy in, or digesting a book would be studying it and paying attention to it closely. However, because metaphors are hidden, it is important we are aware of them in our daily conversations and lives, because they strengthen our minds and recognize patterns and become a much more skilled thinker. Although Brooks is right about using metaphors for those subjects, you can always use other metaphors for the same subjects. Along with health metaphors for marriage, you can also describe marriage using boat metaphors, with a sinking boat representing a divorce.
Credit: Cultura RF/Mischa Keijser
Class Discussion
The topic of this discussion was the poem “Hope is a thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson.
The question for this slide was “How does the author utilize the extended metaphor to express a theme or message to the reader?” I thought about how the whole poem refers to hope as a bird, and noticed that it spent the whole poem using an extended metaphor. I thought about how the author describes hope as doing birdlike things, or hearing the bird (hope) in the most extreme places. The author uses descriptions of a bird to describe how hope is always there even when things seem grim, even in the worst situations. However, to someone who has never learned of metaphors, they would likely see this poem as being strange, wondering how a word can be a bird? Knowing what metaphors are let you see the deeper meaning of some things, like this poem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0edKgL9EgM This is a video by TED-ed about the art of metaphors, with examples of poems and entertaining visuals, why the metaphors are important, why they help us understand the world, and also explanations of some common metaphors like “Raining cats and dogs”.
Team Work
For teamwork, we read a poem named “Mother to Son” By Langston Hughes. My team and I all felt that the extended metaphor in this poem is that life is very hard and rough but you must persevere. In the poem, Hughes describes how life is not a crystal stair, but has broken boards and splinters. This is a metaphor for how life is not easy and smooth, but hurts and is rough, with many obstacles and pain. But despite this, you must keep climbing the stairs, or keep living and persevering in life. The mother in this poem likely felt a lot of pain and conquered many obstacles in her life, and she is encouraging her son to persevere too, and climb the stairs like she did, and like how she is doing.
Credit: Niklas Sjöblom
The second poem we read was called “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” By Tupac Shakur.
Our team talked about how throughout the whole poem, the author refers to a rose like a human, learning how to walk and having dreams. It also seems that the author referred to the concrete the rose is trying to grow through as challenges that a person must overcome. Based on this, we believed that the whole poem was an extended metaphor for overcoming challenges despite disadvantages, because growing through concrete is very hard, but the end result of a rose is beautiful, so you should strive to achieve your goals.
After reading both of these poems, we compared them. We all thought that both these poems express a common theme of persevering through challenges, with the first poem representing life’s struggles as painful stairs and the second poem representing overcoming difficulties as a rose growing through concrete. We thought that both poems showed how growing through concrete and going up the stairs is hard, meaning that life is hard, but you must keep climbing the stairs or growing through the concrete, so you will shine and reach your goals.
Summary/Reflection
Overall, this lesson was about why metaphors are important, how they are used, when they are used, and what extended metaphors are. This lesson showed how we use metaphors all the time and often in poetry to convey feelings or emotions we cannot express using other means. For example, someone could express the struggle of life as stairs using metaphors, and use extended metaphors to truly emphasize their ideas and emotions about life. Sometimes metaphors can allow us to express ourselves to others without even realizing it, giving insight to our personality and ideas. Understanding metaphors and when people use them can allow us to understand them more and become a much more skilled thinker as well. Metaphors can also allow you to tell if someone feels a certain way. If they were to describe their life being a deep dark pit, they would obviously feel bad about themselves and their life, but if they were to describe their life being a pot full of gold and happiness, they would most likely be much happier than the other description. We analyzed several poems showing how the authors themselves expressed their feelings and emotions about life, both using extended metaphors to describe difficulties you must overcome to shine and persevere in life. This lesson opened my eyes to metaphors in daily life, and ever since this lesson I have been noticing them all the time, and noticing another side to people’s personalities I have never seen before. Metaphors allow you to see the world and people differently, and become a much smarter person as well. I will personally use metaphors very often whenever I want to convey an emotion/idea with a minimal amount of words.
Note: This lesson was completed without live instruction, so I talked with my group members using Discord to communicate our thoughts for teamwork.
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