Day 5 – English 10
We have all made it through our first week of our 180 day mission!
I am starting to get to know some of you and we are just getting started. Our walkabout through the 16 Habits of Mind gave many of us a few laughs yesterday and today we are moving on to work with the first habit:
Thinking about Thinking. /
(Metacognition)
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
—Plato
The human species is known as Homo sapiens sapiens, which basi- cally means “a being that knows their knowing” (or maybe it’s “knows they’re knowing”). What distinguishes humans from other forms of life is our capacity for metacognition—the ability to stand off and examine our own thoughts while we engage in them.
Reflection (when you look back and think about something) is a valuable skill that we will practice often during the next few months. Along that same idea, we are going to start thinking about how and what we think about reading, writing, and learning.
So let’s get started with a Pre-Habits of Mind Survey.
Today in class —
METAPHORS
Definition
Here are two senses of metaphor:
1. A metaphor is the expression of an understanding of one concept in terms of another concept, where there is some similarity or correlation between the two.
2. A metaphor is the understanding itself of one concept in terms of another.
The terms metaphor and simile are slung around as if they meant exactly the same thing.
A simile is a metaphor, but not all metaphors are similes.
A simile is a type of metaphor in which the comparison is made with the use of the word like or its equivalent.
Metaphor is the broader term. In a literary sense metaphor is a rhetorical device that transfers the sense or aspects of one word to another.
A common fault of writing is to mix metaphors.
Before Uncle Jesse (Dukes of Hazzard) did it, some WWII general is reputed to have mixed the metaphor Don’t burn your bridges, meaning “Don’t alienate people who have been useful to you,” with Don’t cross that bridge before you come to it, meaning “Don’t worry about what might happen until it happens” to create the mixed metaphor: Don’t burn your bridges before you come to them.
Many metaphors are used so often that they have become cliché. We use them in speech, but the careful writer avoids them: hungry as a horse, as big as a house, hard as nails, as good as gold.
Some metaphors have been used so frequently as to lose their metaphorical qualities altogether. These are “dead metaphors.”
Examples:
“Shall I Compare Thee to a summer’s Day”,
William Shakespeare was the best exponent of the use of metaphors. His poetical works and dramas all make wide-ranging use of metaphors.
“Sonnet 18,”also known as “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day,” is an extended metaphor between the love of the speaker and the fairness of the summer season. He writes that “thy eternal summer,” here taken to mean the love of the subject, “shall not fade.”
“Before high-pil’d books, in charact’ry / Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain,”
The great Romantic poet John Keats suffered great losses in his life – the death of his father in an accident, and of his mother and brother through tuberculosis.
When he began displaying signs of tuberculosis himself at the age of 22, he wrote “When I Have Fears,” a poem rich with metaphors concerning life and death. In the line “before high-pil’d books, in charact’ry / Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain”, he employs a double-metaphor. Writing poetry is implicitly compared with reaping and sowing, and both these acts represent the emptiness of a life unfulfilled creatively.
From the above arguments, explanations and examples, we can easily infer the function of metaphors; both in our daily lives and in a piece of literature. Using appropriate metaphors appeals directly to the senses of listeners or readers, sharpening their imaginations to comprehend what is being communicated to them. Moreover, it gives a life-like quality to our conversations and to the characters of the fiction or poetry. Metaphors are also ways of thinking, offering the listeners and the readers fresh ways of examining ideas and viewing the world.
Metaphors of Reading and Writing
Part I
How did you feel, physically, the last time you read all or part of a book, magazine, or newspaper?
Where were you?
Were you comfortable?
Did your back hurt, your teeth ache?
Did you feel warm or cold?
Do you recall it as a pleasant or unpleasant experience?
What was the name of the book, magazine, or newspaper?
What kinds of reading are dangerous for you?
Were you ever humiliated when reading, whether by an insensitive teacher or an obnoxious little brother?
Do some kinds of reading put you in danger of looking dumb? Please explain.
What cozy and familiar childhood memories of reading do you have? List some of those memories.
What has your life history as a writer been like?
Do you think of yourself as a powerful reader?
Please explain.
Do you find yourself enjoying reading and writing outside of school but disliking reading or writing inside of school. Please explain.
List three images or pictures that might describe what reading is like for you. Do the same for writing. Are your feelings about these two skills different or the same? Create as many or as few metaphors for your experience of reading as you like.
Directions: First, talk to your group members about the metaphors that you have developed. Answer questions they ask; ask questions of them. Second, select one metaphor from each group member to illustrate. Finally, using materials available, make a collage of your group’s metaphors.
Part II – This step will take place in class on Monday.
After you have created the collage, you will present it to your peers. First, your group will present to another group, for practice. Then, you will present the collage to the class. As you present, you should explain why you placed each drawing or magazine cut-out where you did. You should also explain your metaphors and why you used them.