Metaphors and Similes Carry the Weight of Their World - Research Paper Example

? Metaphors and Similes Carry the Weight of Their World Metaphors and Similes carry much more meaning than the one or two words they employ. The author is connected to the audience, and uses those symbols that will touch that audience the most deeply and carry the most meaning. It uses the cultural content within the imagery to communicate on a much deeper level than mere words. Kate Chopin was intimately familiar with her audience, and used metaphors and similes to imply character, and to govern the mood and emotional content of her stories. Chopin knew which images and words would have strong emotional impact on her audience, because she was part of that society, and she used figurative language to carry much more information than the words, themselves, contained. Kate Chopin, born in 1851, dabbled in writing during her early years; however, she did not actually get too serious about it, as a career, until 1883. The daughter of an immigrant father from Ireland, and a Creole mother, Kate Chopin married a New Orleans cotton farmer at the age of nineteen. After her husband’s death in 1883, Kate began writing short stories that focused on the French who settled in Louisiana (An Introduction to Literature 67). “Desiree’s Baby”, written by Kate Chopin in 1892 is an example of how metaphors and similes can create a story that is vivid and stimulating to one’s imagination. Metaphors are very creative devices, which make what you are speaking about sound bigger, better, smaller, or worse (Chaffee 335). For instance, in Kate Chopin’s short story “Desiree’s Baby”, “Desiree was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she felt closing about her”, is a metaphor that embodies blind struggle (117). The reader of Chopin’s knew the dangers of mist (or fog). New Orleans was a port, and many ships never arrived when they hit fog and wound up on the rocks. It was also dangerous in New Orleans of that day to be out in a fog. One might be assaulted and nobody would see (Pontuale 121) The image of “penetrating the mist” is a very strong one for people in her environment and their emotional reaction would be a small adrenaline rush. Eric Witchey (30-55) writes, “If done well and grounded in character, all three literary tools (metaphor, simile and symbol) deliver a reader experience greater than the sum of their words. If done poorly and not grounded in character, you get buffaloes in red shoes.” Chopin carries this even further by adding a matching metaphor: “She called to him, in a voice that must have stabbed him” (118). Readers of today get much of the same reaction by virtue of mass media experience. The readers have read or watched movies about things which can happen to people in a thick fog, and even magicians use it on stage to enhance the suspense and thrill for the audience. Rosenblatt described the relationship between the writer and the reader in her book on Transactional Analysis, “The Reader, the Text, and the Poem”(Rosenblatt ) . What she said, essentially, was that each time a reader reads something it is different, even for the same reader and the same reading, because the readers bring their own baggage to the first reading and they are changed by it and, therefore, bring different baggage to the second reading. Metaphor and simile draw upon the reader’s experience to increase identification and connections between the story and the reader’s own experience, even that experience of having read the reading before. A metaphor gets its power from the image it creates in the readers’ minds as they connect it to what they already know. A metaphor will not work at all if the reader is not at all familiar with the object or experience which author is using to describe the thing or action in the story. If the reader does not know anything about the symbolism it creates no image. For example, if Kate Chopin had used miasma in the previous example, few people would get any kind of image and many would not even understand what she meant. So, the metaphor must use some universal image to have power (“Metaphor” 1-1). Similes are simply comparisons of two things that are not alike (Chaffee 335). Often the comparison is only implied, and not stated. That is the real beauty of a simile, its parallelism or juxtaposition. For a case in point, in “Desiree’s Baby”, Kate Chopin compares the pitch upon the rooftop to a monk’s hood in this eerie sentence: “The roof came down steep and black like a cowl (116). Also, a fine example of a simile that had a great impact on the visualization of the story was when the author compared Desiree to a statue by stating, “She was like a stone image: silent, white, motionless after she placed it there (118). Both of these descriptions would have been very familiar to her audience, so the impact would be very similar. Similes, also known as obvious analogies, can be spotted out by looking at key words such as, ‘like’ or ‘as’. Metaphors, also known as implied analogies, are often ended with the word of, but sometimes writers simply express an implied analogy which is understood by the reader to be a comparison of two things (Chaffee 335). Drake Bennett (337), author of “Thinking Literally”, suggests that, analogies are creations that help us in a whole new way. They excite the reader; in addition, they help make sense of the language between two people. “Metaphors are primarily thought of as tools for talking and writing”, stated Drake Bennett. Even psychologists have taken a new interest in metaphors. Scientists have discovered that use of metaphors has a great deal to do with the thought process they labeled cognitive processing (Brandt and Brandt 117-130). In his book, “Earthly Delights, Unearthly Adornment,” Wright Morris claims that a writer without the wittiness of a clever image-maker is not leaving their own signature on their readers. He also says there is a danger to learning mimicry too young or too well. The danger he speaks of is creating copycats instead of original image-makers (5). This leads to cliches. Cliches were all once very clever original literary devices that were very powerful, because they were so universal. Now, many cliches are used to create humor as they are recognized as cliche. However, a writer who tries to use them as fresh is always disappointed. Morris suggests, a great deal of his published writing came from experiences in his life that he missed out on having. Imagery is used so well in American literature, that indeed the authors and the reader form a bond of souls and a mental comprehension of minds as well (169). “The World of Imagery,” written by Stephen J. Brown, makes note that, in T. Hilding Svartengren’s work “Intensifying Similes in English,” Hilding attests that, similes describe a part of life in which readers relate to what is written. Brown writes about a list that Hilding compiled of the various parts of life, which include, but are not limited to: social quota, race, religion, and many other living and non-living things. Brown concludes, “such a list, if it have no their use, may serve as a sort of literary examination of conscience with a view to filling up the lacunae of one’s reading and observation” (116-117). The shorthand of simile and metaphor helps reveal emotional states and attitudes.(Witchey 30-55; "Learning about Character." T3) Characterization, whether in fiction or memoir, is one of the most powerful ways authors have to hook their readers, creating great characters is even more complicated when the main character is also the first person narrator, or you're reading an autobiography.("Learning about Character." T3) Similes help extend description, but metaphor goes far beyond mere attributes. Metaphors can help to delineate character more than most other devices, as they tend to set mood and create an emotional reaction. Kate Chopin knew this as she described her main characters. Kong Ling Hui did an interesting analysis of metaphor that shows how it works with characterization. He identified and analyzed five attributes of metaphor: originality, brevity, indirectness, vividness and logic (Ling-hui Kong 62-65). It is the logic which has the most power in characterization. Because it uses an almost hidden association, its use in character description is even more powerful than in other uses, since the aesthetics of metaphor are usually not tangible. The cognitive processing that has researchers looking at figures of speech very closely is needed to process the association and the logical connection. Kate Chopin’s work seems sometimes to be a complicated metaphor in, and of, itself. In “Desiree’s Baby” the metaphor is in the title, because that is the symbol of the ironic twist in the story. He is characterized first as “our” baby, and then becomes “her” baby when it is suspected that he has black origins, and finally he is nobody’s baby as the father burns everything on a sort of funeral pyre, another metaphor for his life, as he discovers that is it he who has negro blood. In “Story of an Hour” Chopin used death as a metaphor for freedom as the Mrs. Mallard, who experienced ecstatic joy when she realized that he life would be her own and she was free, suddenly dies when her husband walks through the door, alive and well (MAYER 94-100). She had earlier thought about having dreaded long life as Mrs. Mallard and now, as a widow, hoping for it. At the end she escapes her recapture by dying. Kate Chopin made extensive use of figures of speech in her very careful plotting as she kept her short stories exceptionally short. Her compact descriptions and limited dialogue build power from the rich symbolism and strong characterization using emotion-laden metaphors and similes. Often the work is a metaphor over all. She made some strong statements about conditions in the south with her powerful imagery using metaphor and simile. In looking at her use of words, the figurative language is highly relevant to the time and place where she lived and wrote. The Civil War had decimated the south and not made things much better for anyone. In “Desiree’s Baby” we get a quiet image of the genteel family down on its luck in a rather shabby plantation, with only the family name being of much value. When that is endangered, the whole universe shifts from a beautiful place of wonderful joy to a dark, damp swampland where Desiree takes her baby for a walk into oblivion. The last image in the story, of the funeral pyre and all the expensive baby things seems fitting for the conclusion. Another of Chopin’s story metaphors is “The Storm”, a story of two lovers who cheat on their spouses and arrive at a new perspective as a result. Their actions parallel the violent storm that accompanied their passion, and the world glistens when the storm is over (MAYER 94-100). There would be little art to literature, or narrative of any sort, without metaphor and simile. The simpler of the two, simile, is also the weaker. It helps to enhance a description and give it more substance and depth. However, metaphor can be as small as a feather touch or as large as existence. Because of the shared experiences of the audience, both figures of speech carry far more meaning then that of the words alone. Simile produces a more tangible image, and metaphor can carry whole narratives to which we connect their target. An Achilles heel, for example, carries with it a whole narrative poem by Homer, and all the stories within it and in the accompanying Iliad. The expression brings up images of naked athletes with perfect bodies, almost insane gods and goddesses and a world of magic and monsters. These figures of speech do even more than expand meaning. They bring a story to life, Works Cited Barnet, Sylvan, William Burto, and William E. Cain. An Introduction to Literature: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2008. Print. Brandt, Line, and Per Aage Brandt. "Cognitive Poetics and Imagery." European Journal of English Studies 9.2 (2005): 117-30. Print. Brown, Stephen J. M. The World of Imagery; Metaphor and Kindred Imagery,. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. Print. Chaffee, John. "Chapter 8 Relating and Organizing." Thinking Critically. 10th ed. Boston: Wadsworth/Clengage Learning, 2012. 335-40. Print. Ling-hui Kong. "Aesthetic Analysis of English Metaphors." Sino-US English Teaching 6.5 (2009): 62-5. Print. "Learning about Character." Literary Cavalcade (Teacher's Edition) 56.1 (2003): T3. Print. MAYER, GARY H. "A Matter of Behavior: A Semantic Analysis of Five Kate Chopin Stories." ETC: A Review of General Semantics 67.1 (2010): 94-100. Print. "Metaphor." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2010): 1-1. Morris, Wright. Earthly Delights, Unearthly Adornments: American Writers as Image-makers. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Print. Pontuale, Francesco. "Reconstruction New Orleans." Mississippi Quarterly 52.1 (1998): 121. Print. Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, and the Poem: A Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Illinois: Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. Print. Svartengren, T. Hilding. Intensifying Similes in English. Lund: Gleerup, 1918. Print. Witchey, Eric M. "Build Characters with Simile, Metaphor and Symbol: A Veteran Story Writer Offers a Process for Mining Your Fiction for Rich Figurative Material." Writer 123.10 (2010): 30-55. Print. Read More