Extended Metaphor - Examples and Definition

Extended Metaphor Definition
The term “extended metaphor” refers to a contrast between two in contrast to things that continues in the course of a sequence of sentences in a paragraph, or traces in a poem. It is regularly comprised of multiple sentence, and every now and then consists of a complete paragraph.

Extended Metaphor Examples in Prose
Example #1: Seize the Night (By Dean Koontz)
“Bobby Holloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus. Currently I became in ring hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cart wheeling and tigers leaping thru rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the principle tent, go buy a few popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.”

(Dean Koontz, Seize the Night. Bantam, 1999)

Here, it is able to be visible that the “circus” has been as compared to the author’s “creativeness.”

Example #2: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (By Michael Chabon)
“It never takes longer than some minutes, after they get together, for each person to revert to the country of nature, like a party marooned by means of a shipwreck. That’s what a own family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills which you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire which you light to maintain away the beasts.”

(Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Harper, 2007)

In the excerpt quoted above, the writer has compared “family” with a “shipwreck.”

Example #3: Life on the Mississippi (By Mark Twain)
“One day [Mr. Bixby] turned on me with this settler —
‘What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'”

“He would possibly as properly have requested me my grandmother’s opinion of protoplasm. I meditated respectfully, and then said I didn’t understand it had any particular form. My gun powdery leader went off with a bang, of course, after which went on loading and firing until he became out of adjectives.”

“I had learned long ago that he simplest carried in order that many rounds of ammunition, and turned into certain to subside into a totally placable and even remorseful vintage smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone.”

(Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi. Webster, 1883)

Here, it could be seen that the author makes use of metaphors like “gun powdery,” “firing,” and “ammunition” to explain the “anger” of Mr. Bixby.

Example #4: As You Like It (By William Shakespeare)
“All the international’s a stage, and all of the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Shakespeare has remarkably as compared “earth” to a “stage” inside the excerpt stated above.

Example #5: Romeo and Juliet (By William Shakespeare)
“But soft! What mild via yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the green with envy moon,
Who is already sick and light with grief.”

Here again, Shakespeare has made use of prolonged metaphor through comparing “Juliet” with the “sun.”

Example of Extended Metaphor in Poetry
Example #6: Hope is the Thing with Feathers (By Emily Dickenson)
“Hope is the aspect with feathers
That perches inside the soul,
And sings the tune – with out the words,
And never stops at all,

“And sweetest within the gale is heard;
And sore must be the hurricane
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

“I’ve heard it inside the chilliest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, by no means, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”

In the poem given above, Emily Dickinson has remarkably made use of the device of prolonged metaphor via comparing “hope” with the “little bird.”

Example of Extended Metaphor in Hip-Hop
“But in case you changed into LeBron James then I’d be Dwyane Wade
We each graduated on the same time from the same grade
He became at the top of the class, on TV with movie star acts,
But that champion ring was one issue you in no way should grasp,
I become barely rated decrease had to fight to gain exposure
and that may’ve made me slower
but now I even have taken over
And I’m down in Miami’s Heat,
residing my boyhood dreams
And as a way to do what I’ve done,
you’d should be a part of MY team!”

(By Iron Solomon)

In the extract quoted above, Iron Solomon makes a contrast between “LeBron James” and “Dwyane Wade.”

Short Examples of Extended Metaphor
Life is like ingesting a grapefruit. First, one breaks its skin; then one takes some bites to get used to its taste, and ultimately one starts taking part in its flavor.
The dark is an unknown and scary black blanket, an area of nightmares. It is a deep hole where light cannot reach, and in which horror resides.
Their coronary heart is icy, blood frosty, its ventricles rich with icicles; and their phrases have turned into ice cubes that can chill iced tea.
Life is a book, mendacity on a tabletop, its pages outspread like 1000 wings of a bird.
I elegantly bloom in July,
Clad in a delicate silk,
I am a fringed lily.
Poetry is melody to mind,
It flows and rhymes,
It comforts and triggers the thought.
The world is a stage,
where all people is a player,
after which the curtain falls.
The human mind is a computer. It has programs that allow thinking, acting, and making decisions.
He is a bright star, shining all the time, and assisting and guiding everybody.
Maria’s eyes are fireflies, sparkling, speaking, and expressing many matters.
They are pointing guns on the people, who're bullets of their desires.
You are an eagle,
Soaring higher than the seagull.
The café is a forest,
Where wild animals scramble for food.
Painting is an untamed animal,
That a painter is free to show his/her feelings.
My room is a dreamland,
With fluffy pillows its clouds
And Chirping birds its angels.
Extended Metaphor Examples in Literature
Example #1: The Road Not Taken (By Robert Frost)
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …
I took the one less traveled through,
And that has made all of the difference.”

In this poem, Frost compares existence reports and journeys to roads that someone travels. By the usage of prolonged metaphor, he explicates that a harder path offers extra rewards in existence.

Example #2: Mother to Son (By Langston Hughes)
“Well, son, I’ll inform you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair …

I’se nonetheless climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”

Hughes makes a contrast between existence and a crystal stair at some stage in this poem. A mother in the poem is detailing her struggles and reviews by explaining her staircase is tainted by means of “splinters” and is “bare.” Despite this, she keeps “climbing,” which further heightens the staircase metaphor, as a automobile to get better or better. Her struggles supply inspiration in addition to advice to her son.

Example #3: Habitation (By Margaret Atwood)
“Marriage is not
a residence or even a tent

“it's miles before that, and colder: …

“this far
we are mastering to make fire.”

Atwood has used extended metaphor of a habitation to provide an explanation for marriage. She believes marriage is not a stable shelter, like a “house or maybe a tent.” She as an alternative describes it as an unstable “edge” of the forest or desert. The poem is a description of a couple “learning to make fire,” while trying to survive “painfully.” This prolonged metaphor implies that, though marriage is tough, it makes a person learn new matters.

Functions of Extended Metaphor
Extended metaphor provides the author with an opportunity to make a larger assessment between two things or notions. The tool of extended metaphor is generally employed in prose and poetry to mission a particular impression regarding matters or notions in the reader’s mind. Further, the tool serves to mission the assessment intensely inside the reader’s mind, than is the case when easy metaphors or similes are used.