Personification & Imagery & Metaphor & eXtended Metaphor

1. Personification &Imagery &Metaphor &eXtended Metaphor American Literature A – Fall 2013

2. Personification: Make it Human • Assigning human-like qualities to non-human things. • Examples: A hook shot kisses the rim, hangs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop. • The run down house appeared depressed. • My computer throws a fit every time I try to use it. • The bees played hide and seek with the flowers as they buzzed from one to another. • While making my way to my car, it appeared to smile at me mischievously. • The evil tree was lurking in the shadows. • The avalanche devoured everything in its path. • I could hear Hawaii calling my name.

3. Imagery: Show, Don’t TelL • The use of visually descriptive words that allow the reader to picture or sense the ideas of a • poem. Images can also follow a pattern in a work. Also recall that imagery is not only visual, • but can appeal to all senses. • from “Preludes“ by T. S. Eliot: • The winter evening settles down • With smell of steaks in passageways. • Six o'clock. • The burnt-out ends of smoky days. • And now a gusty shower wraps • The grimy scraps • Of withered leaves about your feet • And newspapers from vacant lots; • The showers beat • On broken blinds and chimney-pots, • And at the corner of the street • A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. • And then the lighting of the lamps.

4. Metaphor: This is that • Comparison between two unlike objects; sometimes uses is/are. Sometimes sounds • like a false statement, until you realize the similarities between the two things being • compared. These would be phrases like: • “Time is money.” • “Time is a thief.” • “You are my sunshine.” • “He has a heart of stone.” • “America is a melting pot.” • "But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.“ • "Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.“ • "Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes."

5. Extended Metaphor: It’s Longer • Comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of • sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem. • from Will Ferrell’s Commencement Address to Harvard University (2003): • "I graduated from the University of Life. All right? I received a degree from the School • of Hard Knocks. And our colors were black and blue, baby. I had office hours with the • Dean of Bloody Noses. All right? I borrowed my class notes from Professor Knuckle • Sandwich and his Teaching Assistant, Ms. Fat Lip Thon Nyun. That’s the kind of • school I went to for real, okay?"