Analysing poems in GAMSAT: Literary Terms Part III (Metaphor)

“When will you stop being such a couch potato?”
“I am not taking you rug rats to the picnic.”

Yes, you guessed it right! The literary term that we are going to discuss today is the METAPHOR. In this series on ‘How to analyze the GAMSAT Section I poem with the help of literary terms’, we have discussed a host of common rhetorical devices. Like most other literary terms we have dealt with, the metaphor too, is a very frequently used literary device. Once you know exactly what a metaphor is, you will realize how often people use them in their daily speech. Metaphors are an inseparable part of the English language. It makes communication vivid and effective.

So what is a metaphor? Read the following conversation from The Simpsons:

Lenny: Hey, maybe there is no cabin. Maybe it’s one of them metaphorical things.
Carl: Oh yeah, yeah. Like maybe the cabin is the place inside each of us, created by our goodwill and teamwork.
Lenny: Nah, they said there would be sandwiches.

Here, Lenny compares our ‘inner self’ to a cabin that becomes better with ‘goodwill’ and ‘teamwork’. A metaphor is used to express one idea or object with the help of another, using the common point of reference between the two. Unlike the simile, identifying a metaphor while reading a GAMSAT Section I poem will require considerable understanding and skill of the English language. Start with identifying the conventional variety first. It is the simplest kind. Let’s see an example:

“Life is a journey. Enjoy the Ride.” (Nissan)

That wasn’t too difficult to understand. The metaphor of life as a journey is perhaps the most clichéd metaphor in existence. However, this simple metaphor is often extended. Poets have written entire pieces of poetry exploring the various facets of the ‘journey of life’. See below Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Some wittier souls have twisted the ‘journey of life’ metaphor. Isaac Asimov’s version gives this worn out metaphor a whole new dimension: “Life is a journey, but don’t worry, you’ll find a parking spot at the end.” He adds an ironic twist by comparing the end of life (death) to a final ‘parking spot’.

If you have a lot to say and very little time, make it a metaphor. It is the reason why most commercials, movie dialogues, poems are speckled with metaphors. It is indeed difficult to even end this essay without using one!

A visual metaphor*:

*(courtesy: Morgan Stanley Dean Witter)