Metaphors We Live By

Brain Drop: Is life a journey?




Metaphors will be littered throughout your selected nonfiction texts. Try identifying some metaphors from the three short nonfiction texts we looked at in class. After identifying the source and target, wax philosophical about what the metaphor does rhetorically. What sort of picture does the metaphor paint in your head? Refer to our discussions on aesthetics, voice, and style.

For those of you who were not here on Wednesday, please print out and complete the text below:

Name:

Period:                                                                                                                        

Find the Metaphor

Trail by Fire

1)      By now, both investigators had a clear vision of what had happened. Someone had poured liquid accelerant throughout the children’s room, even under their beds, then poured some more along the adjoining hallway and out the front door, creating a “fire barrier” that prevented anyone from escaping; similarly, a prosecutor later suggested, the refrigerator in the kitchen had been moved to block the back-door exit.

 

Metaphor:

Source:

Target:

What does this metaphor do?

 

2)      Dozens of studies have shown that witnesses’ memories of events often change when they are supplied with new contextual information. Itiel Dror, a cognitive psychologist who has done extensive research on eyewitness and expert testimony in criminal investigations, told me, “The mind is not a passive machine. Once you believe in something—once you expect something—it changes the way you perceive information and the way your memory recalls it.”

 

Metaphor:

Source:

Target:

What does this metaphor do?

 

3)      She wrote to Webb, who said that she could see him, and they met in the prison visiting room. A man in his late twenties, he had pallid skin and a closely shaved head; his eyes were jumpy, and his entire body seemed to tremble. A reporter who once met him described him to me as “nervous as a cat around rocking chairs.”

 

Metaphor:

Source:

Target:

What does this metaphor do?

Nick Cave

4)      This is Cave at his best, creating new mythology out of 20th Century pop culture fragments; at turns saucer eyed with terror and then chisel faced with threat like Harry Powell, the tattooed preacher from Night Of The Hunter. The Bad Seeds stripped down to Harvey, Bargeld and Adamson sounded as hungry as they looked.

 

Metaphor:

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Target:

What does this metaphor do?

 

5)      The first album From Her To Eternity was tune parched and pulsed like a migraine but was not a collection of dirges by any stretch of the imagination. The band showed immense restraint, creating acres of space between a clicking snare, the occasional baroque organ flourish and the creaking scrape of sweaty guitar strings. Cave swelled to fill this space like a recently summoned demon. He was the man of many voices. He crooned, wailed, warbled, wheedled, pleaded, hectored, admonished, raved, spluttered and shouted. His true offspring isn't Gerard Way or some other emo sheep in goth wolf's clothing but in fact Li'l Wayne. Cave is Old Jeezy. Old Wheezy.”

 

Metaphor:

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Target:

What does this metaphor do?

Consider the Lobster

6)      And it’s true that they [lobsters] are garbagemen of the sea, eaters of dead stuff,⁴ although they’ll also eat some live shellfish, certain kinds of injured fish, and sometimes each other.

 

Metaphor:

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What does this metaphor do?

 

7)      The basic scenario is that we come in from the store and make our little preparations like getting the kettle filled and boiling, and then we lift the lobsters out of the bag or whatever retail container they came home in …whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen. However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming).

 

Metaphor:

Source:

Target:

What does this metaphor do?