Literary Techniques: Metaphor

Welcome to this detailed guide on one of the many techniques you can find in our Glossary of Literary Techniques for analysing written texts: Metaphor.

Below are some commonly asked questions:

• What is the difference between a metaphor and what is a simile?
• How do I analyse texts for techniques like metaphor?
• How do I explain what a metaphor actually does?

In this post, we explain what metaphors are, how they represent meaning, and walk you through a step-by-step process for writing about them in your responses for Year 11 and 12 English.

Table of Contents

1. What is a Metaphor?
2. How does a Metaphor work?
3. How to Analyse a Metaphor – Step-by-Step
4. Metaphor Examples

Literary techniques: Metaphor

Metaphors are an important and effective means of representing ideas in a text. While common, they are difficult to develop and carry a lot of meaning. That’s why they are hard to discuss in essays where you analyse texts. Metaphors are widespread in society – some even fall into popular idiom (day-to-day speech).

For example, when we see something expensive, we say that it “costs an arm and a leg.” It doesn’t really, but we understand that the expression means the cost is onerous.

Most idioms were once metaphors, but we hear them so often that we take their ingenuity for granted.

What is a metaphor?

A metaphor is a literary technique where one thing is compared to another by stating they share the same qualities.

Metaphors are different to similes.

Similes compare two things by likening them to one another. Similes rely on words such as “like” or “as” to make the comparison. “Like” and “as” often work as prepositions (they relate nouns to one another). For example, in the sentence “the boy was in the bath”, “In” tells us where the subject (the boy) is located in relation to the object (the bath).

So, when “like” or “as” are used, we are saying explicitly that one object is similar to another.

In contrast, a metaphor is NOT suggesting something is like something else. Rather, a metaphor states that the thing IS something else.

For example, “life is like a journey” is a simile. However, “life is a journey” is a metaphor, because it is saying one thing IS something else.

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How does a metaphor work?

A metaphor is a way of comparing two things to show how they are alike. It helps describe something (called the tenor) by borrowing qualities from something else (called the vehicle).

For example, if a poet says “love is a journey”, they don’t mean it literally. Instead, they’re showing that love, like a journey, can have ups and downs—or that all journeys (and relationships) eventually reach an end.

Metaphors are one of the most powerful tools in language. We use them all the time, often without noticing.

Everyday expressions like “grasp the idea” are metaphors too. We don’t actually hold an idea in our hands—we’re just borrowing the feeling of physically grasping something to describe how we understand it.

Literary texts are typically full of metaphors. Writers like Shakespeare use them so often that you need to unpack them constantly just to understand what’s going on.

How to analyse a metaphor:

The best way to become good at spotting metaphors is to practice analysing them. Here’s an example of how to spot them:

1. Ask yourself if the sentence or phrase compares two things
2. See if the sentence uses “as” or “like” as a preposition. If it compares things without using prepositions such as “like” or “as”, it is a metaphor.
3. See what it’s comparing:
   1. What is the object being discussed (the tenor)?
   2. What is the object being compared to (the vehicle)?
4. Ask yourself, “how does this develop meaning in the text?”
   1. What are the qualities of the “vehicle”?
   2. How do they change your perspective of the “tenor”?
   3. What themes in the text does this comparison relate to?
5. Discuss your insights using a T.E.E.L structure. Remember, all metaphors should be able to be described in the following way: ‘the composer combines love with a journey in order to suggest that, like a journey, all loves come to an end.’

Let’s discuss this in more detail.

Step 1: Read the sentence or phrase to see if it compares two objects

A metaphor implicitly compares a pair of things. Remember, this means they don’t use words such as “as” or “like” to make a comparison between things.

Let’s have a look at an extract from the final act of Shakespeare’s The Tempest as an example:

PROSPERO: He[Caliban] is as disproportion’d in his manners
As in his shape. Go, sirrah, to my cell;
Take with you your companions; as you look
To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.

CALIBAN: Ay, that I will; and I’ll be wise hereafter
And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass
Was I, to take this drunkard for a god
And worship this dull fool! (5.1)

In the above example, there is a metaphor and a simile. Can you spot both of them?

1. He [Caliban] is as disproportion’d in his manners / As in his shape.
2. What a thrice-double ass / Was I, to take this drunkard for a god / And worship this dull fool!

Step 2: See if the comparison relies on words such as “like” or “as”

When Prospero states that Caliban is “as disproportion’d in his manners as in his shape,” he is explicitly comparing Caliban’s behaviour to his physical deformities (Caliban is described as a misshapen man who appears to be part fish). The use of the word “as”, which works as a preposition, signals that this is not a metaphor. Clearly this must be a simile.

When Caliban states “What a thrice-double ass was I, to take this drunkard for a god and worship this dull fool,” he is comparing himself to an “ass” (a donkey) of great size (“thrice-double”). To do this, he says he “was” an ass. This is using a verb to state he was something, not that he was like something. This is a metaphor!

Step 3: See what the metaphor is comparing

Clearly “What a thrice-double ass was I, to take this drunkard for a god and worship this dull fool” is a metaphor. But what does it mean and how does it work? Let’s have a look.

1. The Vehicle is the “thrice-double ass”.
2. The Tenor is “I”, referring to Caliban.

This means the main object being compared is Caliban himself. Caliban [the tenor] is comparing himself to a “thrice-doubled ass,” this is the vehicle. We understand this to mean that Caliban is saying he is an “ass” for believing that somebody else (a character called Stephano) was a “god”.

Now we can see what is being compared and how, we need to figure out what meaning is being represented.

Step 4: Unpack how meaning is being represented by the metaphor

We can understand the meaning of Caliban’s metaphor “What a thrice-double ass was I, to take this drunkard for a god and worship this dull fool” by considering the qualities of the vehicle: “a thrice-double ass”.

1. An ass is a donkey. Donkeys are stereotyped as being slow, stubborn, and dim-witted.
2. This vehicle is comparing Caliban to this animal and that he shares these qualities. Caliban is stating that his actions were stupid and have made him look silly. This is a moment of personal insight and awareness. We could say it is a discovery into his presumptuous nature.
3. Anagnorisis is a moment of personal insight or awakening. It is the moment in a text where a character experiences a significant discovery about themselves or others. This metaphor depicts Caliban making such a discovery – he was foolish. This coincides with the theme of personal discovery within the text.

Now, we need to discuss the metaphor in our writing. Let’s have a look at how to do this.

Step 5: Discuss your understanding of the metaphor using a T.E.E.L structure

It is not enough to identify the metaphor, we also need to explain how it develops meaning for the reader. This means you need to use a T.E.E.L structure to explain what you think it’s saying.

T.E.E.L stands for:

• Technique: The technique used in the example
• Example: The example
• Effect: Your explanation of the effect of this technique and how it develops meaning
• Link: An explanation of how this example supports your argument.

You can find a more detailed explanation of using T.E.E.L in our post on paragraph structure (this post is part of our series on Essay Writing and shows you the methods Matrix English students learn to write Band 6 essays in the Matrix Holiday and Term courses). Let’s use this T.E.E.L structure to write about this example of a metaphor.

• The technique being used is metaphor.
• The example of the metaphor is “What a thrice-double ass was I, to take this drunkard for a god and worship this dull fool”
• The effect of this metaphor is that Caliban presents himself as a fool by comparing himself to a donkey.
• The link to our argument about discovery is that Caliban uses this metaphor to demonstrate that he is having an insight into his own nature by realising he has made an error of judgement.

Let’s put this together into a complete piece of analysis:

Take a minute and read that a few times to understand how it works together.

Now we have gone through the step-by-step process of analysing a metaphor, let’s take a look at a couple of examples of metaphors from different texts to see how we could write about them.

Metaphor examples

Metaphors are quite common so, to make sure you fully understand what they are and how they work, let’s have a look at two more examples.

Example 1: Ted Hughes – Red

Let’s consider the second stanza of Ted Hughes’ Red:

When you had your way finally
Our room was red. A judgement chamber.
Shut casket for gems. The carpet of blood
Patterned with darkenings, congealments.
The curtains — ruby corduroy blood,
Sheer blood-falls from ceiling to floor.
The cushions the same. The same
Raw carmine along the window-seat.
A throbbing cell. Aztec altar — temple.

In this stanza, the persona describes their bedroom after their wife has painted it red. The persona describes the red decoration of the room with imagery of blood. In the final sentence of the stanza, the persona uses a metaphor “Aztec altar – temple” to describe the room. This is a complex metaphor that has powerful connotations (that is, implied meanings).

Aztec altars were used ceremonially to cut out the hearts of sacrificial victims. Here, the persona is using the metaphor of the Aztec altar as the vehicle to imply that the redecorated bedroom, the tenor, was now a place where they had their metaphorical heart removed.

If we were to write about this use of a metaphor in an essay we would say that:

Example 2: TS Eliot – Preludes

Let’s consider the third part of TS Eliot’s Preludes:

In this stanza, the persona is describing the actions that an individual (presumably a reader from the early 1920s) does in bed.

The persona uses an extended metaphor (a metaphor that runs over several lines) of a cinema (the vehicle) – “watched the night revealing / The thousand sordid images / Of which your soul was constituted; They flickered against the ceiling” – to describe the subject’s dreams (the tenor). The persona is describing an individual’s moment of self-reflection and self-criticism where they, in a light state of sleep, agonize over their past errors.

If we were to discuss this analysis of the metaphor in an essay we would say:

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