____?____ = ___________?_________

Extended Metaphor

Dean Koontz, Seize the Night. Bantam, 1999

"Bobby Holloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus. Currently I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cartwheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down."

NOTICE his use of participials.

Emily Dickinson's Extended Metaphor: Hope as a "Little Bird"

"Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune--without the words,And never stops at all,

"And sweetest in the gale is heard;And sore must be the stormThat could abash the little birdThat kept so many warm.

"I've heard it in the chillest land,And on the strangest sea;Yet, never, in extremity,It asked a crumb of me.“

Will Ferrell's Extended Metaphor: The University of Life

"I graduated from the University of Life. All right? I received a degree from the School of Hard Knocks. And our colors were black and blue, baby. I had office hours with the Dean of Bloody Noses. All right? I borrowed my class notes from Professor Knuckle Sandwich and his Teaching Assistant, Ms. Fat Lip Thon Nyun. That’s the kind of school I went to for real, okay?”

(Will Ferrell, Commencement Address at Harvard University, 2003)

Mark Twain's Extended Metaphor Life on the Mississippi

"One day [Mr. Bixby] turned on me suddenly with this settler--

"'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'

"He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm. I reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had any particular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course, and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.

"I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many rounds of ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable and even remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone."(Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883)

House Calls: The Metaphors of Dr. Gregory House

Dr. House: As far as you're concerned, the patient is Osama bin Laden, and everyone not in this room is Delta Force. Any questions?

Applicant #11: We're protecting Osama bin Laden?Dr. House: It's a metaphor. Get used to it.

("The Right Stuff")

Susan Orlean's Extended Metaphor: "Super-Duper"

If football is a metaphor for war, then Super Bowl week is a metaphor for football. Throughout the week, everything had a sort of battlefield urgency and martial precision. Posted at the Media Center: "Following is a press release regarding the Super Bowl Sod. It is from Bermuda Dunes (near Palm Springs), California, not Las Vegas. . . . It is very important for it to be known that the sod is from Palm Springs . . . and not Las Vegas, as has previously been reported." Over the PA at an outdoor souvenir fair: "Attention, personnel! We need mini-helmets at the autograph booth! Mini-helmets! ASAP!" At the Commissioners' Party, an enormous gala at the Miami Beach Convention Center, the league owners were penned in a corner apart from the crowd and were guarded by wiry tough guys with walkie talkies. One tough guy had collared a small, tan man with luminous white hair who was headed into the pen. "Station to command base," the guard said into his walkie-talkie. "I have a certain individual here asserting he is one of the owners of the Seattle Seahawks. Can you clear me?" He was, and they did.

The Super Bowl is billed as the ultimate American sporting event and the ultimate athletic battle: No other television broadcast attracts a larger audience, and the money and effort that people spend to attend it is stupendous. But during my week in Miami, I didn't feel that it was on the brink of a singular decisive battle: I felt that I was bouncing from one little skirmish to another--the mini-helmet crisis, the heavy-duty credentials checkpoints at the parties, the elbowing through crowds to get near one of the players, the press briefings about which Charger had a case of the gout and whether the 49ers practiced in full pads or just in sweatclothes. Very few Super Bowls ever turn out to be exciting games. This is blamed, variously, on the misalignment in the two football conferences, which means the matchup always has one clearly superior team; on the fact that you can never guarantee that any single game in any sport will be suspenseful (as opposed to a playoff series, which builds momentum); or on the simple fact that nothing, no matter how thrilling, could ever live up to the hype that precedes every Super Bowl. Still, everyone runs around all week in a state of high excitation. There is a real contest at the Super Bowl, but it's not on the field--it's a battle for tickets and hotel rooms and invitations and autographs and access and souvenirs, and it requires both an offensive and a defensive strategy.

Your Turn!

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 3

See provided handout for text. Using a highlighter underline diction that supports

the metaphor you find within this text.

Party Life = _______________.

YOUR Turn

Draft an extended metaphor for a character of your choice. Nick Carraway Tom Buchanan Daisy Buchanan George Wilson Myrtle Wilson Jordan Catherine

Check your diction!

Out-of-Class: Listen!

Think: what is an extended metaphor for the setting of the novel?

Find a song that contains an extended metaphor. “Note” the metaphors

within this picture.

Thank You!

Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide Extended Metaphor "House" Calls: The Metaphors of Dr. Gregory House Susan Orlean's Extended Metaphor: "Super-Duper"