Metaphor and Simile

Among the most important figurative (as opposed to literal or factual) uses of language, metaphor and simile make comparisons as a way of illuminating or developing meaning. Metaphor equates two things that are not the same, while simile says two unlike things are like each other. At their simplest, these figures of speech (underlined below) may be used in a descriptive way to emphasize qualities, as in this Navajo praise poem:

. . . my horse whose legs are like quick lightning (simile)
whose body is an eagle-plumed arrow . . . (metaphor)

(“War-God’s Horse Song I,” trans. Dave & Mary Roberts Coolidge), 1968)



The classical Greek philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics (about 330 BC) declared metaphor one of the highest achievements of poetic style: “it is the token of genius. For the right use of metaphor means an eye for resemblances.” In the following examples, however, metaphor and simile go beyond physical resemblances to compare complex states of feeling. The metaphors in the first example are not even stated. The speaker compares a time in her life to a baby bird’s life inside an egg, and then compares the egg to the oval of an ellipse.

Still at the Egg-life–
Chafing the Shell–
Till you troubled the Ellipse–
And the Bird fell—

(Emily Dickinson, Poem #728, 1935)



In the following example both metaphors and similes are used, although sometimes the words for the comparison are implied rather than stated. The use of both stated and unstated metaphors and similes helps communicate unexpressed feelings.

Light, like a defect, cut the rain.
The legal daylight held
Its star-shaped umbrella over me.

(Medbh McGuckian, “The Cutting-Out Room,”1992)



The comparison between “light” and “defect” is explicit in the word “like”. There is also an implicit comparison between “daylight” and something “legal” (a legal act?) in the second line. In the poem below, a woman is compared to a “shot glass of vodka,” and “a field of poppies,” with the word “like”. But there are also underlying metaphors that are unstated: vodka burns (like fire) in the throat and poppies burn (like fire) because of their red color. Both are intoxicating drugs (like the woman in the poem) that distort reality.

She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rainforest.

(Yusef Komunyakaa, “You and I Are Disappearing,” 1993)



Unstated metaphors can have a surprising emotional effect on readers when the poet uses an implied comparison to invent an image, as is the case with these lines by 20th-century Canadian poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje:

All day
dust covered granite hills
and now
suddenly the Nile is flesh
an arm on a bed

(“The Hour of Cowdust,” 1979)



In the 17th century, metaphysical poets, who are called this for their intellectual poetry about truths beyond the physical world, favored extended metaphors, or conceits, that act as links in a descriptive chain. For example, American poet Anne Bradstreet’s conceit below makes many comparisons between a book and a child.

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge),
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light.
The visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.

(“The Author to Her Book,”1678)



Metaphor tends to encompass other poetic devices as well, in particular imagery, the use of descriptive language to create pictures in the reader’s mind.