KingdomOfRats wrote:
what is analogies and metaphor?
have heard of metaphor before,but don't know meaning of either.
Brilliant question KoR, I had to think hard on it, because I don't find the explanations to be any easy. I enjoyed coming up with the explanations though and I do think I got it finally right and understandable.
An analogy is when one discovers similarities between two or more different things after comparing them.
The only short example I can think of right now is one taken from biology. Birds and bats have both developed a kind of wings with which they can fly (or glide), but the way these wings are constructed and the way these animals developed them over the course of time is not in any way connected by relation. They just happened to both be put into similar situations at different times in which they had to find a way to fly.
I think it describes analogies well. Two system are the same or just similar - the content most likely differs, because they have different origins. I often compare Karma to a river, because I think they function very alike.
It was fairly hard to figure how to describe a metaphor, but I think I'm correct with the following.
One teacher once told me metaphors are comparison without adding 'like/as'. 'She's as clever as a fox' is a comparison, whereas 'She
is a clever fox' is a metaphor.
It is a metaphor when various attributes of one thing (like the fox) are taken to underline attributes that another person (the she) has. By saying the above sentence, the speaker indicates that this person is the same as a fox or has the qualities of one. In short, metaphors (as I know them) mean to express an equality of two things that in the mind of the speaker are alike.
They're often used to put abstract ideas and visions into everyday examples, so that another person can understand it and relate to it. We just read poems on Spring in school and in a fair amount of these poem, the author writes about romantic relationships and lovers to indicate that he or she feels the same towards Spring as he or she feels towards these things.
This doesn't help at all with spotting metaphors though. Least with understanding them. How I am supposed to know what random highly metaphorical poems may mean... I haven't figured that out yet.