A form of figurative language which is the opposite of literal language. Literal language concerns itself entirely with fact, and is preferred for scientific writings, weather reports, minutes of meetings and most kinds of scholarly or formal documents. On the other hand, metaphor has the power to evoke images, not by exact description, but by suggestion and the use of analogy.

Our language is awash with commonplace metaphors that we use without a second thought, perhaps because we are creatures of habit. Hanging by a thread; a square peg in a round hole; pie in the sky and so on, are all common metaphors that have become clichés through overuse. Even so they still function in the sense of creating an image.

When we say heads will roll, we get an immediate impression of some sort of severe punishment, even though beheading in the literal sense is no longer practised. We should not see metaphor as a mere decoration or author’s flourish. It is a hard-nosed language that simplifies statements and cuts verbosity. Metaphor bypasses the tedium of literal explanation and goes straight to the heart of the matter, compressing, creating images, and stretching word meanings into new perceptions and dimensions. Good literature abounds in memorable examples such as these:

They spoke with tongues of thin metal. (Patrick White)
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail. (Shakespeare)
The tree hunched its broad back against the rain. (Nancy Cato)
He took up his tuba and entered its embrace. (Tim Winton)

Brilliant new metaphors under the heading Towards More Picturesque Speech used to appear regularly in Reader’s Digest. Invariably, someone’s clever invention was all too quickly popularised and turned into a cliché, for example: He shifts his brain into neutral and lets his tongue idle on. We all know someone deserving of that cogent description, but sadly it has lost its impact through overuse.

The history of metaphor is a long one. Aristotle said: ‘The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor, and it is necessary to have an eye for resemblances.’ (A better eye, that is, than the city council which made this announcement: ‘We intend to have a breakdown of all traffic on the bridge’.)

When you fully understand and appreciate the power of metaphor, and how difficult it is to achieve, you will begin to read fiction with a greater degree of critical awareness. You will quickly spot the tendency of some authors to write in a prosaic literal style. Their writing will seem dry and colourless, designed to inform rather than to inspire or excite. Poets become respected for any number of reasons, not the least being their enviable art of compressing verbiage into terse, vibrant metaphor. Try it. Your writing could take off to new heights of excellence!

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