Introduction to Critical Thinking (CT04/05)

Spring 2024
Worksheet 2

Speaking Metaphorically Exercise

Step 1: Please read this excerpt from World into Word by Mark Doty:

“Here’s one of those stories everyone swears is true, though they always seem to have happened to
a friend of a friend, and are never quite verifiable. I heard it from my friend Genine, and I’m not
quite sure where she got it. A man was telling his therapist about a fight he’d had with his mother.
They were standing together in the kitchen, arguing, and then, he said, “My mother put the icing
on the cake.” The therapist said, “Oh?” “Yes,” he said. “She put the icing on the cake?” “Yes.”
The therapist persisted: “But how did she put the icing on the cake?” “She put the icing on the
cake.” And so it continued, until they realized they were talking about a literal cake; the mother
was holding a knife covered with buttercream frosting.

A few summers ago, in Prague, I had the opposite experience. Considerately, restaurant menus
often offer English translations beneath the Czech listing, but the translations are often dodgy.
“Beef consommé with faggots,” for instance, took us aback, but nothing was as hard to figure out
as an appetizer called “smoked language.” Then one of the diners at our table decoded the dish,
which was tongue.

The therapist assumes language must be metaphoric; the dogged but well-intentioned menu
translator assumes it must be literal. I tell these two little bits of anecdote because they point to the
absolute centrality of figurative speech. You could say that all language is metaphoric, since the
word stands for the thing itself, something the word is not. In her memoir, The Names of Things,
the Egyptologist Susan Brind Morrow points to the origins of letters in the observation of nature,
how the scuttle of crab claws on sand, for instance, influenced the hieroglyph for “writing.” To use
words at all is to use them figuratively; we breathe metaphor, swim in metaphor, traffic in
metaphor—and the verbs in those three phrases illustrate my point.”

Doty then outlines six principles of figurative speech:

1. To say what we see is to speak figuratively.

Doty says that the “first project of simile and metaphor is to describe, to say what something’s like.
Unless we restrict ourselves to mere measurement, we cannot do so without resorting to
comparison.”

2. Figures work together to form networks of sense.

Introduction to Critical Thinking (CT04/05)
Spring 2024
Worksheet 2
As readers, we need to pay attention to unravel figurative language. This is because metaphors
describe an object that stands in for something else. What that “something else” is becomes clear
due to the relationships between these figures.

3. Figuration is a form of self-portraiture.

Apart from saying something about the object, Doty says that figures also reveal the character of
the perceiver, “a kind of perceptual signature, a record of an individual way of seeing”. Our word
choices reflect how we experience the world.

4. Metaphor introduces tension and polarity to language.

Metaphors can make our writing come alive. Doty says that the “figurative often introduces rich
and unexpected language” into writing which shifts the elements of the text’s vocabulary.

5. Metaphor’s distancing aspect may allow us to speak more freely.

Doty says that metaphoric language can act as a “veil”, allowing us to speak indirectly. As readers,
we might need to do some detective work to understand the subtext. Doty says that “that’s how a
good veil works: you can see just the veil itself, if you choose to. But if you want to, or you know
how, you can read what lies beneath.”

6. Metaphor is an act of inquiry (not an expression of what we already know). When we use
metaphors, we are trying to figure out the relation between seemingly distinct objects. Doty says
that this engages our “imaginative energy”. In this way metaphor becomes a kind of argument, a
“thinking through” of what’s implied in a relation between things apparently unlike.

Step 2: Please read Surrendering by Ocean Vuong.

Step 3: In groups, discuss how Doty’s principles are/are not reflected in Vuong’s writing. In the
table below, point out the various sentences where he uses figurative language (metaphor, simile,
personification, etc.). Think about how it affects you as a reader.

Group Members:

Simran Kejriwal, Anusmita Bhattacharya

Stavan Mehta, Salonee Dey
 Instance of figurative language What does it mean? Do you like
its usage?

Extended metaphor - It means that for

The experience of working through a
book, even one as simple as “Where the
Wild Things Are,” was akin to standing in
quicksand, your loved ones corralled at its
safe edges, their arms folded in suspicion
and doubt as you sink.
the author who was a Vietnamese
immigrant, the experience of reading even
a simple book in a foreign language such
as English imparts a feeling of drowning.
The quicksand metaphor, and its extended
use to co-opt family members evokes a
strong emotional reaction in the family
members of the author and reflects the
skepticism and distrust they have for a
foreign education system in America, an
alien country for them.

He held my poem up to the fluorescent Simile - The author here is comparing the
classroom lights and squinted, the way distrustful attitude of people when they
one might examine counterfeit money. think money is counterfeit to the teacher’s
attitude of examining his poem. He cannot
believe that the author as a child had
written the poem himself.

as the boys and girls, my peers, stared, Simile - the author compares the reaction
their faces as unconvinced as blank sheets of his classmates, how unpersuaded they
of paper. seem to be, with a blank sheet of paper
that is empty and has no content. It brings
out a feeling of futility: no matter the
effort, the author's peers are not
convinced; the paper is not filled.

Metaphor- the power of the man’s voice

His voice must possess the power of a is metaphorically compared to the
moon influence (gravitational pull) that is
associated with the moon. On another
level, the moon is a distant object that is
far away but still exerts its power.
Similarly, for him, the speech is distant
and far away but still holds immense
charm.
 Metaphor - Suggests that the words
There must have been medicine in his spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King Junior
words had a healing or transformative effect,
similar to the effect that medicine would
have on a person.

After a few days, the poem appeared as Simile - After a few days of working and
gray graphite words. finalizing his work, finally the poem , the
author’s thoughts manifested itself in a
form of tangible work on paper. The word
gray symbolizes graphite (pencil) marks
on the paper. It is a simile because it
directly compares the appearance of the
poem to gray graphite words.