Essays on Metaphor

The word ‘metaphor’ is originally a Greek work. This word could be literally translated as ‘transport’, where we can transport some features of one thing to another thing. Metaphor has firstly gained attention by the well-known philosopher Aristotle. In the 4th century in his work...

‘Her reality is magical. She has a heightened awareness of the natural world, of smells and sounds, of colour and light. And she renders palpable this world, at once strange and familiar, in prose of sinuous beauty… A small wonder of style and compassion.’ (Jason...

Art has many different forms and styles, all unique to the artist who is holding their chosen medium to the canvas. In Henri Rousseau’s painting Women Walking in an Exotic Forest, there can be multiple interpretations of the image, because of first glance and after...

Emily Dickinson’s ‘A Bird came Down the Walk’ and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’ both utilise the bird as a symbol of nature, with Dickinson’s poem being a violent and abrupt view of the natural world, and Shelley’s poem being more lethargic and the...

A vast body of blue-green salt water, where if one would attempt to look as far across as the eye can see would possibly catch the sight of land on the other side; a simple door; ones’ first day of college; and even another world...

Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” was written when Cromwell’s Calvinism constrained liberty and free-will, and the poem exemplifies an unconventional assertion of love and sexual propositioning, while validating the request to yield in sexual activity with three “arguments”, structured into stanzas. These segments of the...

Poets such as Adrienne Rich and Muriel Rukeyser wrote with the firm belief that poetry had the power to create change, both in individual people and within society as a whole. While they wrote for different political reasons (Adrienne Rich was more concerned with women’s...

In the novel Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev explores the inevitability of man’s integration into society by implementing effectiv structural devices. The parallel trips of the central characters highlight their emotional and intellectual paths and culminate in their seemingly inevitable fusion with society. Similarly, Turgenev’s...

In the book titled The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Weldon Johnson, the topic of race and identity are discussed through the experience of a biracial American. When this man, the protagonist, is introduced the concept of race does not seem to affect...

There is no shortage of violence and death in the stories and myths adapted to the stage by the Ancient Greek tragedians. However, these actions are almost never depicted explicitly onstage: murders play out offstage while the audience is only privy to the sound of...

This Obama Campaign ad, “The Choice” is a political advertisement that was paid for by “Obama for America” and authorized by President Barack Obama for the 2012 Presidential Campaign. This one-minute video was directed to the American voters regarding President Obama and United States Governor...

In “Second Best”, D.H. Lawrence uses the symbol of the mole as the basis for three separate metaphors for dilemmas in the lives of his characters. Each character shows differences in attitude and action towards the creatures, and these differences represent the psychological disparities between...

Ray Bradbury is known for his highly imaginative short stories and novels that blend a poetic style, nostalgia for childhood, social criticism and awareness. Bradbury’s style uses unique metaphors and similes, which stood out in comparison to the utilitarian work that dominated pulp magazine writing....

Martin Luther King’s metaphors try to influence the clergymen to put themselves in the shoes of African Americans. He expresses the privation of African Americans with a metaphor when he wrote; “When you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in...

Are you prepared to face the Wrath of God? This is the question that Johnathan Edwards is proposing to his listeners in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. Edwards delivers three central ideas in his sermon: humans are sinners who belong in hell,...

Home The poem “Home “by Warsan Shire focuses on the importance of home and demonstrates how the connotation of home is experienced by refugees. The poem urges the west host countries to show modest receiving attitude to welcome the refugees and understand their suffering and...

There was a king named Tuan Rio Mangkubumi. He died in a battle with Palembang Kingdom. He was buried in Cakat Monasow Village in Pagar Dewa. Before he died, he talked to his son, Minak Pati Pejurit. “My dear son, you have to defeat Palembang...

Circumstantial constraints serve as a limitation and show up in our life from time to time when we have the urge to do what we desire. Circumstance is an external force that is difficult to avoid, it needs to be resolved by a type of...