Danei Stephenson

Assignment 3
Oct. 31, 2014

But metaphorically speaking, its just a metaphor

I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks,

but I'm drowning in ellipses. () The previous sentence is completely
composed of metaphors. Could the sentence have had said, I am feeling
stagnant in my life and I dont know how to fix it? Of course, but its the
drama of situation and the emotional pull of the metaphor that allows
you to visual see what the writer is saying better.
A metaphor is a figure of speech which makes an implicit, implied
or hidden comparison between two things or objects that are poles apart
from each other but have some characteristics common between them ().
Its a literary device used to make inanimate things literal, literally. It
sometimes shocks me how development a person goes through from
kindergarten to post-secondary school in learning grammar and
linguistic concepts. Who would have thought the sun is shining brightly
on smart children could be expressed as The suns light beamed
brilliance among the hungry brain cells walking towards their future
endeavors. Its the versatility of the figure of speech that makes such it
a staple of everyday conversations.

While there are multiple type of metaphors including absolute,

active, complex, dormant, and synecdotal, three most interesting forms
to use in writing are extended metaphors, mixed metaphors, and
anaphors. An extended metaphor is when a comparisons of two unlikely
things is discussed in more than one sentence; the extend of the
comparison is usually a few sentences or stanzas of poems. In the
Williams Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, uses the following stanza
to describe Juliet as the sun in Romeos life.
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief.

Shakespearean plays are great example of these types metaphors

because the people of that time were motivated to create works of art
through their writings. The importance of extended metaphors during the
time was to give writers like Shakespeare, a place to express themselves
creativity. In just this stanza, you can visual Romeo see towards the sky
looking east waiting for his sun(Juliet) to become the purpose of his day.
Its the personification of the sun in Juliet that expresses the importance
of her character to his. As the sun triumphs moon in the day, Romeo
viewed Julie the same in the metaphor.

A not so commonly use of a metaphor is a pataphor. The way to

develop a pataphor is to make a metaphor (must include two object and
scenario),take the scenario, kept the two objects, and write an entirely
different story. Listed below is an example from pataphor site of which a
simple statements walks into a metaphor to then trample logic to reach a
pataphor.
"Non-figurative:
Jane and Scott stood side by side in the lunch line.
Metaphor
Tom and Alice stood side by side in the lunch line; two pieces
positioned on a chessboard.
Pataphor
Tom took a step closer to Alice and made a date for Friday night,
checkmating. Rudy was furious at losing to Margaret so easily and
dumped the board on the rose-colored quilt, stomping downstairs."

The point of pataphor to embed a metaphor into a deeper

metaphor. When reviewing the Paraphor website, the author of the article
articulated that the metaphor was still the same in the pataphor and
that extra information in the scenario that will ever be matter to what
happened with the original characters ( Tom and Alice). It is this deep of
thinking tat makes this build up of information similar to the idea of
inception (placing an idea in a persons head versus them thinking of it

first by themselves). Pataphor seeks to describe a new and separate

world, in which an idea or aspect of a concept has taken on a life of its
own. ()
The last if three, which is separately my favorite, is a mixed
metaphor. This type of metaphor just mixes metaphors into a larger
metaphor. This is a less complicated idea that a pataphor. In the 2010
film, Social Network, characters Sean and Amy, were discussing a
situation were they used an excellent application of a mixed metaphor.
SEAN
Ah ha. The shoes on the other...
AMY
Foot?
SEAN
--table which has turned.
I believe this is the most useful of metaphors because the more people
try to sound intelligent, the more they try to