ExercisesonSimileandMetaphor.doc

Exercises on Simile and Metaphor
I. Questions:
1. Can you tell a few words or phrases that can be used as simile markers (indicators of resemblance)?
2. Why is a metaphor also called a condensed simile?
3. Does simile have the same rhetorical functions as metaphor?
4. What metaphors are regarded as "faded metaphors"?
5. Can you cite examples to indicate similar similes or metaphors in English and Chinese?
II. Read the following passages and fill in each blank with one word chosen from those in brackets:
A simile is a _________ (complicated, brief) comparison, usually introduced by the preposition "like" or the conjunction "as", eg:
My words swirled around his head ________ (like, as) summer flies. (E.B. White)
The decay of society was praised by artists _________ (like, as) the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. (G. K. Chesterton)
A simile consists of two parts: tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the primary subject — “words” in White's figure, the “decay of society ... artists”, in Chesterton’s. The vehicle is the thing to which the main subject is compared — “summer flies” and the “decay of a corpse ... worms.”
Usually, though not invariably, the vehicle is or contains an image. An image is a word or expression designating something we can perceive with one or another of the senses. “Summer flies,” for example, is an image, primarily a visual one, though like many images it has a secondary perceptual appeal: we can hear the flies as well as see them.
Although generally _________ (brief, complicated), now and then similes may be expanded. Most often this is done by analyzing the vehicle into its parts and applying these to the tenor. Thus a historian, writing about the Italian patriot Garibaldi, explains:
... his mind was ________ (like, as) a vast sea cave, filled with the murmur of dark waters at flow and the stirring of nature's greatest forces, lit ________(here and there, now and then) by streaks of glorious sunshine bursting in through crevices hewn at random in its rugged sides.
(George Macaulay Trevelyan)

III. Go over the passages and decide whether the statements are true or false:
A metaphor is also a comparison. The difference is that a simile compares things explicitly — that is, it states literally that X is like Y. A metaphor compares things implicitly. Read literally, it does not state that things are alike; it says that they are the same thing, that they are identical:
Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts ...
(Henry David Thoreau)
Thoreau writes “is”, not “is like”. We understand, however, that he is making a comparison — that he means the Cape resembles an arm, not really is an arm. The metaphor has simply carried the comparison a degree closer and expressed it a bit more economically and forcefully.
Metaphors have the same functions as similes. They are valuable in clarifying unfamiliar concepts and in translating abstractions into images that readers can intuit directly, as in this passage about science:
[Science] pronounces only on whatever, at the time, appears to have been scientifically ascertained, which is a small island in an ocean of nescience.
(Bertrand Russell)

Metaphors also enrich meaning by implying a range of ideas and feelings and evaluations. Consider all that is suggested by the term “idol” in this metaphor:
We squat before television, the idol of our cherished progress.
“Idol” means a false god and thus questions the value of the progress television symbolizes
and celebrates. The word implies also the unreason and subservience of those who worship it. Such a metaphor not only complicates an idea, it also implies judgment. In the next example the judgmental quality of the metaphor is even more pronounced. Speaking of ancient Romans, a writer remarks;
They were marked by the thumbprint of an unnatural vulgarity, which they never succeeded in surmounting.
(Lawrence Durrell)
Statements:
1. Both the simile and the metaphor are used to make comparisons.
2. Russell’s image of a small island (scientific knowledge) in a wide and lonely sea (the vastness of all we do not know) is a memorable expression of the relationship between knowledge and ignorance.
3. Not only can a metaphor complicate an idea, it can also imply judgment.
4. The image of a greasy thumbprint, like one left on a china or a white wall is a graphic signature of crudeness.
5. Similes and metaphors are identical because they are both comparisons and have the same functions.
6. A most valuable function of a metaphor and a simile is to clarify an unfamiliar idea or perception by expressing it in more familiar terms or turn something abstract into an image that people can see or hear.

IV. Identify the similes and metaphors in the following; then convert the similes into metaphors or expand the metaphors into similes, if possible.
1. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
2. The parks are the lungs of our city.
3. His voice sounded like a thunder in the hall.
4. Money is a lens in a camera.
5. Lottie staggered on the lowest verandah step like a bird fallen out of the nest.
6. We tore through the black-and-gold town like a pair of scissors tearing through brocade.
7. The machine-gun was shooting down the enemy like a mower cutting down grass.
8. Slimy canals crept like green snakes beside the road.
9. Applications for jobs flooded the Employment Agency.
10. Hitler's attack on Poland in 1939 was like lightning.

V. Study and improve the following sentences:
1. Life was like a journey studded with pitfalls.
2. Not all slim girls are paper tigers.
3. A real friend is like a mirror that can help you see your mistakes clearly.
4. Examinations are the death sentence to students.
5. Jack's house was destroyed by fire. Jim went to comfort him and asked him to contact the insurance company. “Cheer up, my friend,” he said. “Your insurance claim will be proceeding like a house on fire, I’m sure.”

VI. Translate the following into Chinese:
1. The data processing is going on as slow as a snail.
2. Every man has a fool in his sleeve.
3. The brains don't lie in the beard.
4. Two heads are better than one.
5. The exception proves the rule.
6. An ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory.

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