I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like: A Comprehensive Compilation of History's Greatest Analogies, Metaphors, and Similes

333 Pages·2008·1.21 MB·English

by  Mardy Grothe

I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like
A Comprehensive Compilation of History’s Greatest
Analogies, Metaphors, and Similes
Dr. Mardy Grothe
To my very special grandson
Ryan Matthew Wood,
who at the age of eight
already knows about chiasmus and oxymoronica
and will soon be learning about
analogies, metaphors, and similes
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: An Ice-Axe for the Frozen Sea Within
(Life-Altering Metaphors)
Chapter 2: Reserved Seats at a Banquet of Consequences
(The Human Condition)
Chapter 3: Humor Is the Shock Absorber of Life
(Wit & Humor)
Chapter 4: The Lights May Be on, but Nobody’s Home
(Insults & Criticism)
Chapter 5: Enclosing Wild Ideas Within a Wall of Words
(Definitive Metaphors)
Chapter 6: Life Is the Art of Drawing Without an Eraser
(Life)
Chapter 7: A Relationship Is Like a Shark
(Relationships)
Chapter 8: Love Is an Exploding Cigar We Willingly Smoke
(Love)
Chapter 9: Marriage Is a Souvenir of Love
(Marriage, Home & Family Life)
Chapter 10: Sex Is an Emotion in Motion
(Sex)
Chapter 11: Old & Young, We Are All on Our Last Cruise
(Ages & Stages of Life)
Chapter 12: An Actor Is a God in Captivity
(Stage & Screen)
Chapter 13: Washington, D.C., Is to Lying What Wisconsin Is to Cheese
(Politics)
Chapter 14: Sports Is the Toy Department of Life
(Sports)
Chapter 15: Writing Is the Manual Labor of the Mind
(The Literary Life)
Acknowledgments
Searchable Terms
About the Author
Other Books by Dr. Mardy Grothe
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
introduction
T
he sentence you are reading at this very moment is an example of prose (the
word comes from the Latin prosa, meaning “straightforward”). Prose is the
language people generally use to transmit information and express ideas. Closely
resembling the patterns of everyday speech, prose is the kind of writing typically
found in books, newspapers, and magazines. These are examples:
Prose and poetry are two methods
people can use to express ideas.
A committee is a questionable mechanism
for making decisions or solving problems.
Adolescence is a time of great turmoil.
Every now and then, though, prose is spiced up and becomes more fanciful:

Prose is to poetry as walking is to dancing.
PAUL VALÉRY
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly
strangled.
BARNETT COCKS
Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness.
ARTHUR KOESTLER
In the first set of observations, the prose is straightforward but prosaic,
meaning it lacks imagination and even borders on dull. In the second set, the
prose is enhanced by analogies, metaphors, and similes, a trio of extremely
valuable tools at the disposal of writers, orators, and poets. With the assistance of
these three stylistic devices, ordinary language is elevated, often to an
extraordinary degree. This is undoubtedly what the nineteenth-century American
journalist and poet William Cullen Bryant had in mind when he wrote:
Eloquence is the poetry of prose.

This book will celebrate history’s most spectacular examples of poetic prose
—all constructed by the use of analogies, metaphors, and similes. Let’s begin by
meeting the key players.
ANALOGY
From the dawn of civilization, human beings have tried to understand one thing
by relating it to something else. This approach—called analogical thinking—has
been extremely helpful as people try to make sense out of a world that can often
seem confusing or even incomprehensible.
Formally, an analogy is an attempt to state a relationship between two things
that don’t initially appear to have much in common (the word derives from the
Greek word analogia, formally meaning a “proportionate” relationship between
two pairs of things). In what may be the oldest analogy ever recorded, from
around 1350 B.C., the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton was said to have observed:
As the moon retains her nature,
though darkness spread itself before her face as a curtain,
so the Soul remains perfect
even in the bosom of the fool.

In this ancient observation, the pharaoh was drawing an analogy between the
moon hidden behind a curtain of darkness and a soul hidden behind a curtain of
foolishness. Both continue to exist, he maintains, even when they cannot be
seen. For many centuries, analogies have been used to instruct people and to
dispense moral lessons. In this case, the ethical principle embedded in the
analogy might be expressed this way: don’t be too quick to shun or reject people,
for behind all foolish or inappropriate actions there exists a perfect soul within.
While analogical thinking goes back to the oldest days of antiquity, people
thinking about analogies these days are likely to recall those peculiar and often
perplexing constructions that have long been a staple of intelligence tests and
scholastic aptitude tests. The format will probably be familiar to you:
illness : life :: (blank) : iron
a. steel b. blade c. forge d. rust

Following a convention going back to ancient times, the analogy is read this
way:

“Illness is to life as (blank) is to iron.”

The task here is to figure out which one of the four multiple-choice options
bears the same relationship to iron as illness does to life. After a moment’s
thought, the answer is easily reasoned out. Just as illness can threaten or end a
life, rust can threaten or destroy iron.
In the fourth century B.C., the Greek philosopher Antisthenes found another
aspect of the human experience that was analogous to iron and rust:
As iron is eaten away by rust,
so the envious are consumed by their own passion.

Rather than simply assert that envy is a destructive passion, Antisthenes
begins by taking a phenomenon that is well known—the damaging effect of rust
on iron—and relates it to something not so familiar—the damaging effect of
envy on people. By expressing his thought in an analogy, he made it very easy
for people to forge a mental picture of the slow, corrosive process whereby one
thing gradually eats away and eventually destroys something else.
People who say “Let me offer an analogy” are trying to explain one thing by
relating it to something else. The entry on analogy in The Concise Oxford
Dictionary of Literary Terms explains it this way:
Illustration of an idea by means of a more familiar idea that is similar or
parallel to it, and thus said to be analogous to it.
Structurally, analogies are often constructed in the A is to B as C is to D
format:
Reading is to the mind, As cold waters to a thirsty soul,
what exercise is to the body. so is good news from a far country.
JOSEPH ADDISON THE BIBLE—PROVERBS 25:25
As soap is to the body, What garlic is to salad,
tears are to the soul. insanity is to art.
YIDDISH PROVERB AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
Sometimes the format is varied slightly, and the intention shifts from the
serious to the humorous:

The murals in restaurants are
on a par with the food in museums.
PETER DE VRIES
And sometimes an additional explanation is appended after the formal
analogy, just to make sure the point is understood:
Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark.
You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.
STUART H. BRITT
Al Capone was to crime what J. P. Morgan was to Wall Street,