Teaching Resources: Extended metaphor examples in literature
What is an extended metaphor?
A metaphor that continues over multiple sentences and that is sometimes extended throughout an entire work.
Why do writers use extended metaphor examples in literature?
Extended metaphors allow writers to draw a larger comparison between two things or ideas. In rhetoric, they allow the audience to visualize a complex idea in a memorable or tangible way. They highlight a comparison in a more intense way than simple metaphors or similes.
If someone was unloving, you could simply say that their heart was ice. But if you wanted to really drive home the point, you might say, “Their heart was icy, their blood frosty, their ventricles filled with icicles, their words turning to ice cubes that would chill an already chilly iced tea.” This example also elucidates the dangers of this literary device. When used poorly, it can be too heavy-handed.
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Teaching Resources: Extended metaphor examples in literature
Give students an introduction to metaphors using Flocabulary’s Similes & Metaphors video lesson. Teach them how their writing can come to life like a play on the stage! This song teaches students to define and distinguish similes and metaphors and how to interpret them in context.
Extended metaphor examples in literature and Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s As You Like It
Perhaps the most famous metaphor of all…
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players;
Shakespeare’s As You Like It
They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief…”
In Flocabulary’s song Romeo & Juliet: First Meeting, we translate Shakespeare into a modern language to bring you the first dialogue between Romeo and Juliet. You’ll witness how we wrote the lyrics with the original puns and romance in mind. Questions for the reader of both versions: Is Juliet merely playing hard to get? Or does Romeo actually change her mind with his butter-smooth rhymes? Check it out!
Extended metaphor examples in hip-hop
E. Ness vs Iron Solomon
“But if you was LeBron James then I’d be Dwyane Wade
Iron Solomon
We both graduated at the same time from the same grade
He was at the head of the class, on TV with celebrity acts,
But that champion ring was one thing you never could grasp,
I was slightly rated lower had to fight to gain exposure
and that might’ve made me slower, but now I have taken over
And I’m down in Miami’s Heat, living my boyhood dreams
And for you to do what I’ve done, you’d have to join MY team!”
Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)
“Run on the track like Jesse Owens
GZA
Broke the record flowin’, without any knowin’
That my wordplay run the four hundred meter relay
It’s on once I grab the baton from the DJ
A athlete with his iron cleat in the ground
Wildest who sprint off the gun sound
The best time yet still seven-point-zero
Swift flow made the cameramen clothes blow.”
Extended metaphor examples in poems
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 18 is one long extended metaphor. In this Flocabulary song, we put Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 into music. The speaker questions whether it is possible to preserve the beauty of the young man through his own rhymes. Four hundred years later, we’re still reading—and listening—to the poem, which serves as an affirmation of the speaker’s hypothesis. And yes, we’re rapping sonnets.
Hope by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That 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 storm
That could abash the little bird
That 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.
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