Literary analogies can help the audience understand instruction from the writer or artist.
Examples of the Literary Technique: Analogy
Here are some common analogies:
“Life is a road.”
“On the road of life, we must stay on the straight and narrow.”
In these cases, the writer is using the comparison of life being like a road as a way to demonstrate the idea of not taking "wrong turns" in life.
Purpose of the Literary Technique: Analogy
The analogy is a metaphor taken to a deeper level, going beyond a simple description, to a more involved comparison.
Instruction through Analogy
Very often teachers will use analogy to help their students. Here are some examples:
- An atom is like our solar system.
- Electrical current is like a river.
- English 101 is like boot camp.
Students also have their own analogies:
- School is like a prison.
- Homework is like punishment.
Parents Have Analogies
- Being a parent is just like babysitting, but the parents never come back.
- If everyone went and jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge too?
Analysis of the Literary Technique: Analogy
In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass describes the first time that he witnessed a slave being whipped, in this case a relative.
"I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I remember it...It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery through which I was about to pass."
Douglass is equating slavery with Hell. He is going beyond a simple metaphor, and is trying to instruct the readers in the misery and inhumanity of the condition of slavery.
Bush Compares Night of Sept. 11, 2001 to Marx Brothers Comedy
In an interview of George W. Bush and his wife Laura, Peggy Noonan asked them about September 11, 2001. . While they acknowledged the tragedy of the day, George and Laura did find humor in the situation by the end of the evening.
Apparently, an airplane was approaching the White House, and George and Laura were roused by the Secret Service and led toward the White House shelter. However, the plane was friendly, and the Bushes returned to their bedrooms, laughing about how ridiculous they must have looked.
Peggy Noonan suggested that September 11, 2001 began with tragedy, but ended in comedy for the Bushes, as if they had been in a Marx Brothers movie, and George and Laura laughed and agreed.
These are some quotes from the Ladies Home Journal in 2003, regarding the evening of Sept. 11, 2001:
"Laura Bush: I don’t have my contacts in , and I’m in my fuzzy house slippers —
George W. Bush: And this guy’s out of breath, and we’re heading straight down to the basement because there’s an incoming unidentified airplane, which is coming toward the White House. Then the guy says it’s a friendly airplane. And we hustle all the way back up stairs and go to bed.
Mrs. Bush: And we just lay there thinking about the way we must have looked.
Peggy Noonan (interviewer): So the day starts in tragedy and ends in Marx Brothers.
George W. Bush: That’s right — we got a laugh out of it"
So with the US under attack, and over 3,000 Americans dead, the Bush family ended the day laughing.
References
George and Laura Bush, 2001, Blue Room Christmas Tree George_and_Laura_Bush.jpg
Glossary of Literary Terms
The Long and Winding Road. 9 October 2008
Stitt, Ralph F. 1931 Chico, Harpo, and Groucho
Teresa Knudsen - Teresa's writing appears in the British Library, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Online she has written for USA Today and E How.
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