Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Writing (Part 1)

Utilizing Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Writing (Part 1) Consider these two sentences from Leonard Gardners epic Fat City: The stooped structures crept in a lopsided line, similar to a wave, over the onion field.Occasionally there was a whirlwind, and he was inundated by unexpected stirring and glinting shadows as a high winding of onion skins shuddered about him like a multitude of butterflies. Every one of these sentences contains an analogy: that is, a correlation (for the most part presented by like or as) between two things that are for the most part not alikesuch as a line of transient specialists and a wave, or onion skins and a multitude of butterflies. Scholars use analogies to clarify things, to communicate feeling, and to make their composing increasingly clear and engaging. Finding new analogies to use in your own composing likewise implies finding better approaches to take a gander at your subjects. Analogies likewise offer non-literal correlations, however these are suggested as opposed to presented by like or as. Check whether you can recognize the suggested correlations in these two sentences: The homestead was squatted on a depressing slope, where its fields, fanged in stones, dropped steeply to the town of Howling a mile away.(Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm)Time surges toward us with its emergency clinic plate of limitlessly changed opiates, even while it is setting us up for its unavoidably deadly operation.(Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo) The principal sentence utilizes the analogy of a monster squatted and fanged in stones to depict the homestead and the fields. In the subsequent sentence, time is contrasted with a specialist going to a destined patient. Analogies and allegories are regularly utilized in expressive composition to make striking sight and sound pictures, as in these two sentences: Over my head the mists thicken, at that point break and split like a thunder of cannonballs tumbling down a marble flight of stairs; their midsections opentoo late to run now!and out of nowhere the downpour comes down.(Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire)The seabirds float down to the waterstub-winged freight planesland unadroitly, taxi with vacillating wings and stepping paddle feet, at that point dive.(Franklin Russell, A Madness of Nature) The principal sentence above contains both a comparison (a thunder like that of cannonballs) and an illustration (their guts open) in its performance of a tempest. The subsequent sentence utilizes the allegory of stub-winged load planes to portray the developments of the seabirds. In the two cases, the metaphorical examinations offer the peruser a new and intriguing perspective on thing being depicted. As writer Joseph Addison watched three centuries back, An honorable illustration, when it is set to a preferred position, throws a sort of wonder round it, and darts a gloss through an entire sentence  (The Spectator, July 8, 1712).â NEXT: Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Our Writing (Part 2).