Figurative Language

Simile• A comparison of two unlike things using like or as

• She is like a cow.

Metaphor• A comparison of two unlike things

• She is a cow.

Pun• A play on words, lame joke, or words that have a double

meaning.

• She’s so punny.

Irony• Verbal: Sarcasm• “I love doing chores!”

• Situational: Unexpected Outcome• Rain on your wedding day

• Dramatic: When the audience knows something the characters don’t.• You know the bad guy is right around the corner.

Symbolism• When something represents something else

• The conch in LOTF

• The mockingbirds in TKAM

Allusion• Reference to something well-known

Personification• Giving an inanimate object human qualities

• The dog laughed.

• The waves whispered.

Puns• I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit

me.

• I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down.

Metaphor• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings• The free bird leaps

on the back of the winand floats downstreamtill the current endsand dips his wingsin the orange sun raysand dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalksdown his narrow cagecan seldom see throughhis bars of ragehis wings are clipped andhis feet are tiedso he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird singswith fearful trillof the things unknownbut longed for stilland is tune is heardon the distant hillfor the caged birdsings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breezean the trade winds soft through the sighing treesand the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawnand he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreamshis shadow shouts on a nightmare screamhis wings are clipped and his feet are tiedso he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird singswith a fearful trillof things unknownbut longed for stilland his tune is heardon the distant hillfor the caged birdsings of freedom.

• Maya Angelou

Personification• Two Sunflowers

Move in the Yellow Room.• "Ah, William, we're weary of weather,"

said the sunflowers, shining with dew."Our traveling habits have tired us.Can you give us a room with a view?"

• They arranged themselves at the windowand counted the steps of the sun,and they both took root in the carpetwhere the topaz tortoises run.

William Blake(1757-1827)

Personification• The Train• I like to see it lap the miles,

And lick the valleys up,And stop to feed itself at tanks;And then, prodigious, step

• Around a pile of mountains,And, supercilious, peerIn shanties by the sides of roads;And then a quarry pare

• To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the whileIn horrid, hooting stanza;Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;Then, punctual as a start its own,Stop-docile and omnipotent-A stable door.

• By Emily Dickinson

Allusion, Simile, Personification“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”LET us go then, you and I,When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table;Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreats 5

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question…. 10

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panesLicked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

20

Irony"Ironic"

An old man turned ninety-eightHe won the lottery and died the next dayIt's a black fly in your ChardonnayIt's a death row pardon two minutes too lateAnd isn't it ironic... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding dayIt's a free ride when you've already paidIt's the good advice that you just didn't takeWho would've thought... it figures

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly

He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbyeHe waited his whole life to take that flightAnd as the plane crashed down he thought"Well isn't this nice..."And isn't it ironic... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding dayIt's a free ride when you've already paidIt's the good advice that you just didn't takeWho would've thought... it figures

Symbolism• The Road Not Taken• Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claimBecause it was grassy and wanted wear,Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I marked 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 sighSomewhere 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.

• Robert Frost

Identify the type of figurative language used.

Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918

119. Trees

I THINK that I shall never seeA poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day, 5

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain. 10

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Answers• Personification• Simile• Allusion

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's DaySonnet 18

William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date.Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Answer• Metaphor

Love Is Not AllLove is not all: it is not meat nor drinkNor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution's power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Answer• Irony• Personification

Lord of the Flies• But I tell you that smoke is more important than the pig,

however often you kill one.

• Smoke is ________________?

Answer• A symbol of home

In Romeo and Juliet,

When Mercutio begs Romeo to dance, Romeo refuses. Unlike Mercutio’s shoes with “nimble soles,” Romeo says that he has a “soul of lead.”

At one point, Romeo asks for a torch, saying “being heavy [sad], I will bear the light.”

One of the cleverest and most morbid poems comes as a joke from a fatally-stabbed Mercutio, who stops joking to explain that “tomorrow … you shall find me a grave man.”

Answer• Puns

Assignment• Find an example of each of the literary terms (pun, irony,

simile, metaphor, personification, symbolism, allusion) in poetry.

• Print off the poems, label the figurative language, and turn them in.

• Due next time!