James Baquet

    Ming is chatting with his classmate Mark in the common room of their dorm.

    Ming: Hi, Mark. Would you mind helping me study some more?

    Mark: It would be a pleasure.

    Ming: Thanks. Today, I have a list of literary terms.

    Mark: Great! What’s the first one?

    Ming: Listen: “A metaphor is a figure of speech which compares two things, in order to describe one by calling it the other.” I can say that, but I don’t really know what it means.

    Mark: What can you say about a friend who eats too much?

    Ming: “He’s a pig?”

    Mark: Right! But is he actually a pig?

    Ming: Of course not!

    Mark: Good! That’s a metaphor. When we call something a thing that it’s not, in order to describe it creatively, that’s a metaphor. Now, what if you said, “He eats like a pig?”

    Ming: Is that… a simile?

    Mark: Yes! The way he eats is similar to the way a pig eats.

    Ming: I’ll buy that. So a simile is like a metaphor, but it uses “like?”

    Mark: Yes, or “as.”

    Ming: Like, “I’m free as a bird.”

    Mark: Perfect!

    Ming: Okay, I think I have those two. Here’s another: What’s an analogy?

    Mark: Actually, similes and metaphors are both types of analogy — comparing two things to help make one of them more understandable.

    Ming: An analogy is no different from a simile or metaphor?

    Mark: Not exactly. Sometimes we make analogies that don’t feel like either metaphors or similes.

    Ming: I don’t follow you.

    Mark: You come home from playing tennis. I say, “You must be tired.” How would I know? I don’t play tennis. But I have played other sports, so I can guess your feeling by analogy to my experience.

    Ming: I get it! An analogy can be used more broadly than just in figures of speech.

    Mark: Exactly! You can make an analogy between a heart, say, and a pump, or between winter and night.

    Ming: Now I really get it. Okay, one more word: allegory.

    Mark: Super! An allegory is usually a story, and it’s what we sometimes call an “extended metaphor.”

    Ming: What does that mean?

    Mark: It means there are usually several things in the story that have parallels to something outside of the story. Do you know the movie, “The Wizard of Oz?”

    Ming: Sure!

    Mark: The girl Dorothy has three friends: a scarecrow with no brains, a tin man with no heart, and a lion who is always afraid.

    Ming: Oh, I know! They represent her intelligence, love, and courage, right?

    Mark: Perfect! So as they develop, the story can be an allegory about Dorothy growing up.

    Ming: I got it! I think lots of kids’ stories are allegories.

    Mark: Sure, like the “Narnia” stories, and “Lord of the Rings.”