Analogy

To quote some Joe from Tweeter – the guy is actually named Joe, this wasn't a reference to “a random person” – “Finding the perfect analogy is like balancing a muffin on a pencil”. It’s wonderful how the phrase is so clear, yet ambiguous. Is it as difficult to perform such a maneuver? Or can you just stick the pencil’s ending into the dough and have the muffin static in the blink of an eye? There’s no way to know unless we ask him, but then again, who guarantees he has considered both options?

So, regardless of the level of difficulty of finding a fitting analogy, what is it really that analogy stands for? It has been defined as “a work that functions on a symbolic level, a kind of extended symbolism.” However, for the well trained eye, everything can have multiple meanings and some alternative representation, even if the author himself doesn’t know it or see it.

Analogy can often be mixed with metaphor and extended metaphor, since they are pretty similar, varying only in their extent or elaboration, the use (or lack thereof) comparison conjunctions, or the directness with which they are stated and acknowledged.  It’s all about comparison, comparison, comparison!

Finding examples of analogy is like going shopping for “something new”. You don’t know what you are looking for, but when you see it you know it is the real deal.

OK, maybe the previous wasn’t that successful, but after all, they are simply for clarifying or embellishment. Look for any comparison in anything you read, and unless it is absolutely literal it’s either a metaphor or an analogy.

Next, we observe newspaper articles (not op-eds!) and how and what they use to fit their purpose.

   Nobody likes complaining, right?

   Well, I'll do it anyways:

   A couple of days ago I finished reading the trilogy titled "The Hunger Games" by Susanne Collins, and I warmly suggest it to everyone. The problem with this is that there's an upcoming movie filled with new teen hot actors that are about to drive the audience crazy and create another insanity as the case was with other teen blockbusters before. Still not seeing the bad thing?

   When "twilight", the books came out, they were regular chick flick-like books. the movie made everybody think its the lamest awfullest thing in the world. 'The Last Song" By Nickolas Sparks is a touching book that can reach out to everybody, make you laugh and cry with the characters and most importantly, not let you close the book until the very end. However, the movie, "starring" Miley, the "teen diva" and Liam Hemsworth, the new "blond cutie" made everyone thing it was another work of pink lit, automatically making it repulsive to everyone who has not read, but was maybe going to read the book.
To say that their reputations got ruined would be an understatement. 

   So, consequently, the Hunger Games Movie, is probably going to be another douche-bag movie with stuff that deteriorates from the actual plot, with many dull scenes and with dialog that the "audience wants to hear". Stop it you Hollywood annoyances, ruining literature for fame craze and money.

   Oh, the device of the week?

  One should make up a name for this desecration, PuRuBo ByMaThMoVe
Publicly Ruining Movies By making Their Movie Versions!

STOP IT!

No Really...

STOP IT!!!

The Antipode

   Well, I'm glad this happened, cause I was really running out of things to talk about. I am no longer limited to exposing hyperbole, but I can use other rhetorical devices, or I can even comment on op-eds, maybe combine both and see the devices in op-eds!
   Now that I can write about such a wide range of things, I found myself wondering what should I start with. Just so that I clear this thing with overstatements out, I think that I should shine a light on the so different on the outside, yet so amazingly similar in the purpose: understatement.
 We use this to present something demeaning its extent or value, but making it so obvious that the reader understands the actual magnitude of the subject discussed.
  The example used in my class when explaining this was: "Bill Gates has a bit of money!"
  This is like saying: "There are a couple of people who know 'bout Brangelina!".
  Putting it in context, on a stormy day a person can state "It's just some rain, out there." or on a scorching day use "Mildly warm"!
  Now that we got the basics we can later dwell on more complicated or subtler uses of this device.