Using Rhetorical/Poetical FIGURES for Powerful, Impactful, and Memorable Writing Style: Part Two—Tropes of Comparison

Actually, the apple and the orange have many points of comparison: they’re both fruit, both of about the same size, both (of course) grow on trees, both have an acidic content (albeit different acidities), both might help “keep the doctor away.” But they are, ultimately, different—even if comparable.

The major Tropes of Comparison (again, Tropes are “figures of language” that are NOT LITERAL—they don’t really mean what they say) are fairly well known and, generally, still taught: Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Analogy are all hanging around h.s. and college English classrooms—maybe even some in K-8. These are fairly easy to review:

1. The SIMILE says that things are SIMILAR (the words come from the same root). You’ve likely been taught that the comparative link word is either “like” or “as,” but you can add “than” and “so” to the list. “John is stronger than a bull” is as much a simile as “John is strong as a bull.” “So” is usually found in the more complex or even the extended or “EPIC SIMILE” (such as used by Homer in the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY: “Just as an angler from a jutting point of rock throws out his line and catches the poor fishes, SO Scylla stretched down her many heads and snatched up my men.” [I hope any scholars of Homeric Greek will forgive any inaccuracy in that “translation”—but you get the gist.]
2. A METAPHOR [Greek for “Beyond the Phrase”] is a comparison that EQUATES two things that are not actually the same. “He fought LIKE a tiger in the game” and “She is graceful AS a gazelle” are Similes. BUT, “He WAS a tiger in the game” and “She IS a gazelle on the dance floor” are Metaphors.
3. PERSONIFICATION is a special type of Metaphor in which something not human is given human characteristics. In E. B. White’s great essay, “Once More to the Lake,” he writes: “…the waves were the same waves, chucking the rowboat under the chin….” Wow! a double Personification: the rowboat has a “chin” to “chuck” and the waves do the “chucking.” If you say or write: “The sky was weeping that afternoon,” then you’ve Personified the sky—rather than saying, literally, “It was raining that afternoon.” A related figure, different only in degree, is ANIMATION where an inanimate thing is given animal characteristics: “The wind was howling” or “It was a biting wind.” Now, humans can, of course, howl and bite, but the suggestion in those lines is more of a comparison to a ferocious beast than a human being.
4. An ANALOGY is a multi-part comparison, showing how things are similar along several different points. In John Donne’s famous “Meditation XVII,” we have a list of metaphors that comprise the analogy. “No man is an island” is a Negative Metaphor (it’s as much metaphoric to say what a man ISN’T as to say what a man IS). But “Each man IS a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Death becomes a “translation” into a “better language” (ideally, at least). and Death “employs” many translators: sickness, warfare, accident, etc.—all Personifications. Heaven becomes the great “Library,” where all the scattered “pages” of lives are “gathered together.”

BUT here’s an important one that you likely haven’t bumped into (which is to say, “been presented with in your formal education”): METONYMY (Greek for “Beyond the Name/Word.” In Metonymy, something ASSOCIATED with the subject is used instead of the subject under consideration. Likely the most famous one is “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!” Now Anthony is not LITERALLY asking for their ears, of course—(as with literal comic spoofs on this line—as the film ROBIN HOOD, MEN IN TIGHTS shows in one scene where people remove their ears and throw them up toward the speaker). What Shakespeare’s character is asking for is something ASSOCIATED with their ears: Hearing. He’s saying “Listen to me.”

When you hear the news that, “We are waiting upon word from the White House,” you know that it will be a long time before the White House says anything! What is meant, by Association, is that word from the President or at least the Executive Branch of government is being awaited.

“Cast your eyes upon that!” does not mean to pull ones eyeballs from their sockets and throw them at something—rather: “look at that!”

The Cockneys in London have their own, highly developed street slang. They speak English words, but the phrasings have been changed through a combination of RHYME and METONYMY. It works like this: The cockney says “Use your loaf, man!” but the word “loaf” has been derived from, first a rhyme: “head” (the intended subject) rhymes with “bread.” And “bread is ASSOCIATED with “loaf.” Hence “loaf.” And the MEANING is “use your head.”