World Humanities IIAlec MagnetFebruary 4, 2010

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: Metaphor, Simile, Imagery(and POINT OF VIEW addendum)

Homework Assignment IPlease compose a paragraph of three or four sentences about Jhumpa Lahiri’s “When Mr.Pirzada Came to Dine.” Follow this format:

• Sentence 1: A statement about the story (e.g. Lilia, the main character of JhumpaLahiri’s “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” creates a ritual around the food Mr. Pirzadagives her.”)

• Sentence 2: A quotation from the story that illustrates your statement.• Sentence(s) 3 (and 4): An explanation of how the passage you quote illustrates or adds to

your statement about the story.Please have your paragraph printed out (with your name on it) and ready to hand in at thebeginning of next class, on Tuesday, February 9.

Homework Assignment 2We’re building a toolbox for approaching literature with the skills and attention it takes to open atext up and develop rich and insightful readings of it. Already in your toolbox are POINT OF VIEWand SPEAKER. We now add figurative language: METAPHOR, SIMILE, and IMAGERY.

Included in this handout are the definitions of those terms, as well as four poems to read for nextclass. Please read each of them more than once and with attention. Use the toolbox:

1. What can you figure out about the SPEAKER? What is his or her POINT OF VIEW? Does thepoem imply its own point of view about that speaker?

2. What metaphors or similes does the poem use? What things are being compared, andwhat do we learn about each of them by means of the comparison? Is the poem itself anextended metaphor? For what?

3. What sort of images does the poem include? What sensory experiences does it describe?What ideas or emotions might those sensory impressions convey?

You do not need to write out answers to these questions. Just use them to guide your reading.

Metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things,without using the word like or as. Metaphors assert the identity of dissimilar things, as whenMacbeth asserts that life is a “brief candle.” Metaphors can be subtle and powerful, and cantransform people, places, objects, and ideas into whatever the writer imagines them to be. Animplied metaphor is a more subtle comparison; the terms being compared are not so specificallyexplained. For example, to describe a stubborn man unwilling to leave, one could say that he was“a mule standing his ground.” This is a fairly explicit metaphor; the man is being compared to amule. But to say that the man “brayed his refusal to leave” is to create an implied metaphor,because the subject (the man) is never overtly identified as a mule. Braying is associated with themule, a notoriously stubborn creature, and so the comparison between the stubborn man and themule is sustained. Implied metaphors can slip by inattentive readers who are not sensitive to such

carefully chosen, highly concentrated language. An extended metaphor is a sustainedcomparison in which part or all of a poem consists of a series of related metaphors.

Simile A common figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two things byusing words such as like, as, than, appears, and seems: “A sip of Mrs. Cook’s coffee is like apunch in the stomach.” The effectiveness of this simile is created by the differences between thetwo things compared. There would be no simile if the comparison were stated this way: “Mrs.Cook’s coffee is as strong as the cafeteria’s coffee.” This is a literal translation because Mrs.Cook’s coffee is compared with something like it—another kind of coffee.

Image A word, phrase, or figure of speech (especially a simile or a metaphor) that addresses thesenses, suggesting mental pictures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, or actions. Imagesoffer sensory impressions to the reader and also convey emotions and moods through their verbalpictures.

The Poems

Crossing the Barby Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Sunset and evening star,And one clear call for me!And may there be no moaning of the bar,When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 5Too full for sound and foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,And after that the dark! 10And may there be no sadness of farewell,When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and PlaceThe flood may bear me far,I hope to see my Pilot face to face 15When I have crossed the bar.

(1889)

The Road Not TakenBy Robert Frost (1874-1903)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference 20

(1916)

Harlemby Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run? 5Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load. 10

Or does it explode?(1951)

The Houndby Robert Francis (1901-1987)

Life the houndEquivocalComes at a boundEither to rend meOr to befriend me. 5I cannot tellThe hound’s intentTill he has sprungAt my bare handWith teeth or tongue. 10Meanwhile I standAnd wait the event.

(1936)

The Poets

Alfred Lord Tennyson, more than any other Victorian writer, has seemed the embodiment ofhis age, both to his contemporaries and to modern readers. In his own day he was said tobe—with Queen Victoria and Gladstone—one of the three most famous living persons, areputation no other poet writing in English has ever had.

Until 1850, Tennyson spent 17 years working in relative obscurity on In MemoriamA.H.H., a long poem commemorating Arthur Henry Hallam, thought to be the most brilliant ofhis generation at Cambridge University, where he was Tennyson’s dearest friend (and possiblyunrequited love interest) until his sudden death at the age of 21. Upon the publication of InMemoriam, Tennyson became the favorite poet not just of Queen Victoria, but also of VictorianBritain itself, of which he was named Poet Laureate.

Tennyson wrote a number of phrases that have become commonplaces of the Englishlanguage, including: “Nature, red in tooth and claw”, “’Tis better to have loved and lost / Thannever to have loved at all,” “Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die,” and “The oldorder changeth, yielding place to new.” He is the second most frequently quoted writer in TheOxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare.

Robert Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rurallife and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settingsfrom rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complexsocial and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequentlyduring his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Frost was 86 when he spoke andperformed a reading of his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January20, 1961. He died in Boston two years later. Behind a sometimes charmingly familiar and ruralfaçade, Frost's poetry frequently presents pessimistic and menacing undertones which often gounnoticed.

Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist.He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes was firstrecognized as an important literary figure during the 1920s, a period known as the “HarlemRenaissance” because of the number of emerging black writers. Much of Hughes's early workwas roundly criticized by many black intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be anunattractive view of black life. Nevertheless, Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer,recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations. Although Hughes had troublewith both black and white critics, he was the first black American to earn his living solely fromhis writing and public lectures, in part because of the phenomenal acceptance and love hereceived from African-American readers.

Robert Francis was an American Poet. Although he taught at workshops and lectured atuniversities across the United States, he lived for over sixty years in the same house nearAmherst, Massachusetts. His poems are often charmingly whimsical, presenting conundrums andmysteries with a light, lyrical touch, as in these lines from “The Black Hood”: “Thus do I praiseduplicity and damn it. / I hate equivocation and I am it.” Robert Frost, an important influence onthe poet, said that Francis was “of all the great neglected poets, the greatest.”