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From the mind of Jason Kapcala comes an eclectic journal dedicated to the study of creative writing, rock music, tailgating, and other miscellany. The musings, meditations, contemplations, and ruminations expressed here are my own unless otherwise indicated. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, and opinions, but do so respectfully and intelligently.
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Guest Blogger: Carol Hamblen -- The Role of Metaphor

10/24/2012

9 Comments

 
Picture
In a recent Community Writing Workshops class this past week, I led a presentation called “The Role of Metaphor in Creative Nonfiction.” (Class members can find the handouts in the Resources page.) One point I shared was the difference between metaphor and simile according to my understanding of what French philosopher Paul Ricoeur writes in his book The Rule of Metaphor.

Since class, I have been continuing to ponder these findings, and I would like to share my most recent thoughts and hear your thoughts on the subject, as well. 

Consider the following example: “My neighbor is a metronome.” According to Ricoeur, this sentence would permit a literal interpretation of all the words in the sentence except the last one (metronome). As a reader, you know I am not saying my neighbor is the dictionary definition of a metronome.  (I am not saying my neighbor is “an instrument for marking exact time by a regularly repeated tick.”)  Not being able to make sense of the word “metronome” in this sentence, you seek out meaning beyond the dictionary meaning of the word. A mental floodgate is lifted and a torrent of new associations takes place. You stretch your imagination for another interpretation. You might, for example, imagine that my neighbor is a person so continuously and persistently “on a mission” that he is oblivious to—and intolerant of—those around him. Rigid. Inflexible. Perhaps, tiresome. Paradoxically, all characteristics that a metronome itself (as an inanimate object) does not have.

A metaphorical interpretation of a sentence is required when the sentence contains a word that cannot be understood literally. In the example above, the metaphorical process is the process through which the reader twists the dictionary meaning of the word “metronome” in response to the literary nonsense or playfulness of the sentence.

With a simile, on the other hand, all words in the sentence are used literally (e.g.  My neighbor is like a metronome).

Paul Ricoeur argued that the resemblance between two things as expressed through a metaphorical sentence (my neighbor is a metronome) is more powerful, more moving, if you will, than the resemblance expressed in a literal sentence (my neighbor is like a metronome). The uniqueness of resemblance in metaphor is in the tension that is created between difference and identity. With original or new metaphors, or living metaphors as Paul Ricoeur called them (which is what we are talking about and which we strive for in our essays), the difference and identity do not merge together.  Rather they confront each other and remain opposed. The use of the predicate (is a metronome) despite its incompatibility is what provides for the instruction, the extended meaning, the deepened understanding, that the metaphor provides.

Moreover, if we are able to successfully substitute a nonmetaphorical word for the metaphorical word in our sentence—if , for example, if we can substitute “dedicated person” for “metronome,”—then “metronome” would have been simply decorative or ornamental and its use would not have provided richness nor complexity nor the new information about my neighbor. 

During our class discussion, Jason stated that metaphor and simile are, for all practical purposes, synonymous in his thinking.  Paul Ricoeur, on the other hand, argues for the supremacy of metaphor over simile.  Jason provided a simile that challenged Paul Ricoeur’s distinction between metaphor and simile. I will look at Jason’s simile below.  But first here’s a recap of Paul Ricoeur’s description of metaphor and simile:

  • SIMILE: When it is written that A is like B, the writer is pointing out and focusing on a single similarity between the two subjects. The dissimilarity between A and B does not play a role in the assertion.


  • METAPHOR: When it is written that A is B, the writer is not referring to a characteristic that B actually has. In fact, A is B does not make literal sense and the reader must come up with a nonliteral (metaphorical) interpretation of the sentence. The reader does that by going beyond the literal meaning (the dictionary definition) of the word B, beyond the actual characteristics that B possesses, to a metaphorical meaning, to characteristics that nonetheless reflect a connection between A and B. The modified meaning of B is “new, but fitting” and “strange but evident,” and perhaps also “surprising but satisfying.”  After this stretching of the imagination, the sentence contains a tension; at the same time that the literal reading of the sentence underlines the difference between A and B, the metaphorical reading proclaims a similarity in spite of the difference.

Before looking at the simile Jason provided, I want to ask two questions for us to consider, as follows:

  1. Do similes typically compare one characteristic of a thing with the same characteristic of another thing.
  2. Do similes typically announce or state the characteristic that the two things share.

Consider the following examples:

           “I ran from the sound of the river into the woods, dark as the inside of a box.”   

                      ―Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

            “My story is not important but odd like horses lying down.”

                      ―C .D. Wright, Cooling Time

Now consider Jason's example, which came from the Darrell Spencer story “The 12-Inch Dog”: 

            “Teeth like Judgment Day.”

The single characteristic we expect to find in a simile is not evident, and I assume the context doesn’t provide it either. If that is the case, I would agree that a metaphorical response is required on the part of the reader to understand the connection being made here.

With the similes above we do imagine a dark box and horses lying down. But in Jason’s simile, we can’t just imagine Judgement Day and how that reflects the physical quality of one’s teeth. We have to stretch our imagination and come up with a nonliteral interpretation; we have to consider the words “Judgment Day” as we would a metaphor. Since the characteristic(s) shared are not told, and are not obvious, in spite of the use of the word “like,” we do have to twist the dictionary definition of “Judgment Day.” 

So I would say that when similes are formed as in the examples above (boxes and horses)—when the single common characteristic is somehow obvious—similes differ from Paul Ricoeur’s use of the word metaphor. Perhaps when they are formed as above (“teeth like Judgement Day”), metaphorical interpretation is called for and they at least approach metaphor as Paul Ricoeur defines it. 

Here, then, are some thoughts, possibilities, questions: 

(Please note: It’s also possible that I didn’t fully understand the crux of Paul Ricoeur’s argument, in which case my presentation would not have successfully presented his distinction between metaphor and simile.)

  • Is a simile like the one used in Jason’s example more infrequent and, perhaps, used more often in contemporary writing than in canonical work? Perhaps it was not something Paul Ricoeur would have encountered.


  • Perhaps it’s not a matter of form at all—whether or not the words “like” or “as” are used—that distinguishes between simile and metaphor.  If you see a distinction between 1) simple imagining (mentally picturing the inside of a box) and 2) stretching the imagination (interpreting a sentence that contains the words “Judgment Day”), then perhaps you could say it is the response required of the reader that distinguishes between simile and metaphor.


What do we think? I’ll be interested in hearing your ideas.  I know I will be looking closely at similes and metaphors in my future reading and see just how they are used and what is required of me as reader.

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9 Comments
Dominique
10/24/2012 01:21:45 pm

Carol- I think this is amazing. I had to read Ricoeur for my own class this semester, and you made it much clearer in my head!

I think I might fall into Kap's camp (Kap's Kamp- Trademarked?) in that I don't see the essential difference in terms of what simile and metaphor can accomplish for us, but recently in my poetry workshop, my professor reminded us that similes, metaphors and ANY metonymic devices help to recreate the reality that we experience every day. They let us see the world in a totally new way.

My example: I went to a poetry reading last week for two (rather famous) poets that was hosted by WVU. I was initially not sold on the first poet at all. (I found his reading rather frat-boy, honestly and that is usually not my scene.) He announced his second to last poem as a piece about basketball, and I sort of want to roll my eyes. I am not so much a basketball-poem person either, I guess! But the poem turned into a description of what it was like to try (and fail) to learn basketball when you were in your sixties, and it ended with a rather gorgeous description of the speaker people-watching a young couple playing on the court next to his, including the fact that after a perfect free-throw, the net lets the ball glide down, yet moves back and forth, "like a woman's hips when she dances" and I was SOLD-because I had never thought about basketball nets that way! A little old simile, and all of a sudden, I saw the poem, the speaker, and basketball in a totally different way. In any case, for me that was an effective use of a metonymic device. I saw something mundane, as if for the first time.

My question is kind of nerdy, but what do we do with the fact that all language is metonymic? By metonymic, I mean the basic comparisons that come to stand in as symbols. All language symbolizes something else, and it is all a comparison to something else, and what do we make of that?

Another example: I have a tattoo on my wrist. It is an image of a tree. When my student noticed it in a conference a few days ago, she said, "Oh- a tree!" Both her words, and the image on my wrist are not the actual tree that stands outside the door to my office. They are not that leafy bark-y thing, but those are the symbols that we use to signify "tree"-ness. My tattoo is the sign for the object that we have come to understand as that big plant-thing. Saying "tree" is the signifier" that we have in our language for the same large plant-thing. Literary theory tells us that the sign and the signifier are never ever going to be the same thing as that which is being signified. By this I mean that the tree of my tattoo is never going to sprout leaves and start growing out of my arm. (That would be rather inconvenient!) It is a mere representation. By writing "tree" over and over again in this post (and you all reading it) you are not going to break your computers with branches starting to grow around your screens. Jacques Lacan said in the 1940's that our reality is constructed by language. Everything we say, or do is a metonymic device. What then, is the necessity for classifying synecdoche, metonymy, simile, and metaphor?

Thanks for giving me so much to think about, Carol!

Reply
Kap
10/24/2012 01:42:32 pm

"Are you Saussure you want to go back down that road, Dominique?"

(I promise I'll post something intelligent tomorrow to make amends for that.)

Reply
Dominique
10/24/2012 01:55:06 pm

I am glad we are Freuds - oh, sorry for that slip!

I am glad we are FRIENDS.

~D

Kap
10/26/2012 10:07:49 am

Well played.

Kap
10/26/2012 10:08:18 am

Hi, Dominique:

Thanks for a great response. I think you are right that similes, metaphors, any figurative use of language, invite us to engage with the subject in a specific way that is different and valuable. I don’t know if I believe that it recreates the *reality* we experience every day, so much as it recreates (or performs) the act of *experiencing* itself (which may be what you are saying anyway). When we read that the basketball net swayed like a woman’s hips, I wonder if we really respond to its “accuracy”—if we YouTube-d the two events, a perfect swoosh and a belly dancer, for example, we probably wouldn’t notice that much similarity between the two. What that metaphor does—what makes it a beautiful metaphor, in my opinion—is that it performs the speaker’s mode of thinking, of being in the moment. And it carries with it a number of stowaway thoughts, feelings, resonances, implications, that make it a powerful event of language. It works not because it really clarifies anything, but because it allows us to inhabit an intuitive brain function that belongs to someone else, one we can’t otherwise inhabit.

As for the linguistic question about the practicality of writers naming different metonymic functions since all language is metonymic, I don’t think there is any practical reason to make a distinction (or even think about these things when writing). Does it matter if it’s a metaphor or simile? No. Not at all. And I can’t afford to stop drafting to ponder that anyway. I think the terms possibly become more useful in providing a common vocabulary to discuss these phenomena after they appear in our work and in the work of others, say, in a workshop setting. (So we aren’t just pointing and going—“ooh, that thing! Whatever it is, I liked it.”) But beyond that, I don’t know that I see much practical reason for today’s writers to distinguish metonym from metaphor, simile from metaphor, and so on.

Reply
Susan Sauter
10/26/2012 08:45:41 am

Carol et al: Wonderfully intense reading. Carol I agree with both your conclusions-that a simile as in Jason’s example may be used more often in contemporary writing than in canonical work-- maybe modern writers expanded the use of both types. And your second point rings true for me in that perhaps it is the response required of the reader that distinguishes between simile and metaphor. To continue the test, of that, consider: Her smile was the sun to me. She smiled like the sun. Neither make me do much mental work (maybe because it's a cliched example.) So now I might be in Kap's Kamp -- does it really matter? Fun conversational thread.

Reply
Kap
10/26/2012 10:21:06 am

I think Carol’s second question is definitely a question worth asking. Though, for my part, I don't know that it's a matter of changing the way we define simile and metaphor (though that's one possibility, I suppose).

To me, simile and metaphor are a linguist's distinction, not a writer's distinction. What I mean is this--it's all metaphorical language. The difference Carol is pointing out between some lines and others (to simplify it more than I should), really just points to the presence or absence of those qualities that separate effective metaphorical language (the kind that engages the imagination) and metaphorical language that falls flat (the kind that doesn't).

Reply
Kap
10/27/2012 03:39:25 am

I also think the C.D. Wright example is worth considering again because, though it seems to work literally (we've got one point of connection: the abstract oddness of the story and the image of horses lying down), there isn't anything literal about it to my mind. Horses lie down on all the time. There's nothing particularly odd about it. I suppose the way they fold their legs under them is unusual, but all four-legged animals do that. So, again, it's not an image that clarifies anything for me about the story. And yet, it's a wonderful metaphor. The kind of metaphor that wears to vapor when we really look at it. (Just as "Teeth like Judgment Day" does.)

Just food for thought.

Carol
11/29/2012 08:35:50 am

To address Dominique and Jason's comments about making distinctons between metaphor, simile, etc., I would agree that for writers and readers it is useful only "after the fact "; that is, let these comparisons and substitiutions emerge from within and let them do their magic first and only when analyzing and discussing make the distinctions. I would say that it can be great fun to make the distinctions at that point. (Of course, I am one who finds some grammatical discussions fun, too!)
I heard the author Mark Turner talk on NPR a couple of years ago. He co-authored a book entitled The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. He said that it is a defining characteristic of our species to put togther two things that don't go together. We put together some of what is and some of what is not. We use imagination as well as actual perception. We are much less enslaved by the present than other speicies are. I did order the book but have not read it yet...probably because it looks like very challenging reading. Now that I have located it I willl leave it out so that I will get to it in 2013.

Carol
PS I read the C.D. Wright example incorrectly; I did not realize that horses do in fact lie down!

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