[Similes And Metaphors In The Book The Hunger Games
Melvin Amey
As was mentioned in a previous post, in their writing toolbox, poets and authors have a plethora of tools that they can use to create word pictures in the minds of their readers. Our first post that examined one of these tools featured onomatopoeia. Two more literary devices are similes and metaphors. Both of these devices have similar functions: to draw comparisons between two unlike things. Keep reading to learn how similes and metaphors are similar and how they are different.
Literature, plays, and poetry are replete with metaphors and similes. Their presence enriches the piece, making the words feel more dynamic and alive. To encounter more of these particular literary devices (and many others as well), take a look at Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization. You can obtain a free sample of the first five poems in Level One by clicking on this link.
A simile (/ˈsɪməli/) is a figure of speech that directly compares two things.[1][2] Similes differ from metaphors by highlighting the similarities between two things using comparison words such as "like", "as", "so", or "than",[3] while metaphors create an implicit comparison (i.e. saying something "is" something else).[1][4] This distinction is evident in the etymology of the words: simile derives from the Latin word similis ("similar, like"), while metaphor derives from the Greek word metapherein ("to transfer").[5] As in the case of metaphors, the thing that is being compared is called the tenor, and the thing it is being compared to is called the vehicle.[6]Author and lexicographer Frank J. Wilstach compiled a dictionary of similes in 1916, with a second edition in 1924.
As when a prowling Wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where Shepherds pen their Flocks at eve
In hurdl'd Cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the Fold:
. . . . . . .
So clomb this first grand Thief into God's Fold[9]
Similes are used extensively in British comedy, notably in the slapstick era of the 1960s and 1970s. In comedy, the simile is often used in negative style: "he was as daft as a brush." They are also used in comedic context where a sensitive subject is broached, and the comedian will test the audience with response to subtle implicit simile before going deeper.[11] The sitcom Blackadder featured the use of extended similes, normally said by the title character. For example:
This is not a comprehensive list of all of the metaphors and similes in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. These are just the ones that stood out to me as being particularly enjoyable.
With the skirt of the dress spread out around her, Creta Kano, riding atop me, looked like a soft, gigantic mushroom that had silently poked its face up through the dead leaves on the ground and opened under the sheltering wings of night.
He seemed to be talking to the stainless-steel sugar bowl in the middle of the table, but of course he was speaking to me. The sugar bowl was just a convenient midpoint between us, toward which he could direct is speech.
The hunger pangs continued to come and go, and the darkness around me grew thicker and thinner, and with each new wave another chunk of my ability to concentrate would be taken away, like furniture being stripped a piece at a time by burglars in an empty house.
The evergreen oak looked almost annoyed as it trembled in the occasional puff of wind with an unpleasant creaking sound. The stones in the garden looked whiter and smoother than they ordinarily did, staring up at the sky impassively like the faces of dead people.
The hint of a smile played about his lips, as if he had just heard a joke and was smiling now in the most natural way. Nor had the joke been a vulgar one: it was the kind of elegant pleasantry that the minister of foreign affairs might have told the crown prince at a garden party a generation ago, causing the surrounding listeners to titter with delight.
He looked at me with eyes narrowed as if to apologize for being unable to speak because of the nervous black panther sleeping by his side. Which is not to say that there was a black panther sleeping by his side: he just looked as if there were.
Unlike the cats, who were more willing to accept their fate (or who at least appeared to accept it), the bears seemed unable to comprehend the fact that they are being killed. Possibly for that reason, it took them longer than was necessary to reach a final parting with that temporary condition known as life.
The captain recovered his presence of mind and gave his order to the navigator, who passed it on to the engine room, and eventually, after a long fit of grinding, the antique engine started up like a sleeping dog kicked by its master.
First, he is literal. He describes his attention in terms of concentration and focus, a beam that spotlights the pitch. This kind of attention pushed aside local issues, like his family, and global issues, like world hunger.
? Her attention came to a fine point, like the end of the sharp pencil she held, hovering over the text. Editing required her to push away everything else she might think about so she could think of one thing: the words in front of her. She was like an antenna.
The lessons learned from this transplantation come out in the form of a didactic novel, where principles sprout, bud, and flower. Characters struggle against workflows gone wrong and learn to right them with ideas that proved revolutionary in the real world.
? Another meeting opened to tense silence. I realized what I was looking for was like dark matter. The mood of one person shaped the atmosphere of the room but I never would have detected it by looking in his face. I had to see everyone else react.
? It was a systemic problem. I could only see it when I realized what I was looking for was like dark matter. Communication delays between our vendors accumulated across each delay, resulting in a seemingly unexplainably slow process. I never would have guessed those tiny delays would be the cause but the effect they had revealed their power.
Mads Holmen, Founder and CEO of Bibblio has written that we\u2019ve reached \u201Cpeak attention,\u201D what he calls \u201Cthe moment when there\u2019s so much competition for your attention that it reaches a saturation point. When there is no more time to spare.\\\"
Not only have we reached peak attention, we\u2019ve reached peak discussion-about-attention. This isn\u2019t because we\u2019ve written everything there is to write about attention (that certainly isn\u2019t true).
\u201CBefore my control problem, I had the ability to just concentrate on the immediate task at hand, which is a wonderful thing for an athlete. I could block out family, world hunger, or anything that was going on, because of that focus. That focus all went away, and everything was occurring in my mind. I was like an antenna.\u201D
Second, he turns to simile. A literal description is too abstract. Ironically, the reader\u2019s attention drifts. How focused is he, really? What does it really mean for the mind to attend that closely?
That\u2019s when he uses simile: he is like an antenna. This paragraph is all compound sentences and stacks of descriptions. That last sentence interrupts the flow--both because it\u2019s short and punctual, and because it\u2019s a comparison instead of a descriptor.
\uD83C\uDFB8 Her attention came to a fine point, like the end of the sharp pencil she held, hovering over the text. Editing required her to push away everything else she might think about so she could think of one thing: the words in front of her. She was like an antenna.
\uD83C\uDFB8 I always prefer a recorder. Some reporters scratch out notes as their interviewees speak, but I can\u2019t split my attention like that. Instead, I flip on my recorder. It captures the exact words, the quotes, the references, the details. I have a different role. I turn my head slightly to the side, my eyes close, my ear angles to the words coming toward them. I\u2019m an antenna.
\u201CSomebody who reads only newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.\u201D
In this excerpt, he critiques people who read only from writers of their current time. According to Einstein (wow, that\u2019s an authoritative-sounding clause), readers who only read from contemporary writers are limited to the perspectives of their era. Their knowledge depends on the ebb of the social tide, the forces that shape the readers they read.
He compares these readers to people with a visual impairment but vaults them out of innocence by projecting a scornfulness. The solution (reading books beyond your time) is readily available but the target of his ire doesn\u2019t use what\u2019s in front of them.
\uD83C\uDFB8 Somebody who only consults with people who resemble him looks to me like someone who\u2019s stubbornly unaware they wear glasses. What they see right in front of them stands stark and clear, but everything to the periphery is a blur. If only they acknowledged their glasses and took them off once in a while and saw that their frames gave them only one perspective.
\uD83C\uDFB8 Someone who only works with people in their field looks to me like someone who is far sighted but too ignorant to wear glasses. They have a vision of where they\u2019re going and all the people who will take them there but all around them is a blur. Every alternative path is unclear and invisible.
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