Metaphors Provide Two Loaves -- and Maybe a Load of Fish
A metaphor is a flash of lightning -- sudden, vivid and electric. In a single instant, it illuminates and clarifies meaning.
In a tribute to film critic Pauline Kael, for instance, New Yorker writer David Denby devised a metaphor that superbly captured Kael's cerebral yet natural style: "The point was to write as an intellectual without closing the top button of your prose and thereby choking a strong, easy breath."
Later in the same piece, Denby wanted to convey Kael's inexhaustible efforts to tell the reader everything she knew or thought about a movie -- to speculate on the director's motivations, anticipate readers' objections, crusade for an overlooked performance. So he cast Kael as the enthusiastic proprietor of a small-town movie house who wanted "not only to show us the movie but bring us the candy, sweep up the theatre, and walk us to our car after the show."
Similarly, many historians use metaphors to moisten even the driest of subjects. William Allen White, for instance, wanted to convey the dusty notion that 20th-century Progressives appropriated all of the 19th-century Populists' ideas with the exception of the free coinage of silver ... zzzzzzzzz.
So he woke up his readers with this splash of metaphor: "(The Progressives) caught the Populists in swimming and stole all of their clothing, except the frayed under drawers of free silver."
Writing in The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan compared her tenuous position as the kid sister in her childhood family to "that of a suitcase to the traveler. Half of the time it's an unholy burden, but when you see it thundering back down the luggage chute, you could weep with relief."
When Hartford Courant writer Pat Seremet wanted to convey the bittersweet taste of "Tea at Five," a play based on the life of Katharine Hepburn, she cleverly poured some metaphoric tea of her own, calling the play "a splendid brew, with enough lumps of sugar to satisfy the fans and just enough lemon to appease the gossips."
Washington Post columnist Rick Reilly captured the late baseball player Pete Rose's penchant for self-sabotage, describing him as "a guy who looked at life like a door he had to knock down, even if there was a perfectly good doorknob waiting."
Novelist Bernard Malamud once summed up the richness and surprise of metaphor with -- what else? -- a metaphor: "I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish."
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Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM
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