How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019
Metaphors – figurative language
How to teach essay writing
We want students to achieve clarity while discussing complex concepts and synthesising ideas of their own. For years, teachers have used the strategy of showing pictures and asking students to relate them to a text. Images help to elicit complex interpretations. What we haven’t done as much is get students to use those images to inform explanation in their essays.
Take the following sentence I’ve used with a class for An Inspector Calls:
The inspector attacks the foundations of the Birling family.
Metaphors are a way to extend and develop students’ interpretations, and provide a shortcut to abstract thinking. Too often, vocabulary can lead us into a dictionary corner: a student has learned broadly what the word ’socialism’ means, but do they understand its relevance to the play and the society in which it is based? Here, metaphorical ’foundations’ take on a role. The inspector isn’t just attacking the people but the ideas they live by, their society, their origins, their education and their way of life. He is attacking their very basis: the thing that is holding them up as a family and in society. Attack a foundation and everything falls. One little metaphor can say so much, so it is a flagrant waste not to use them: they are the diamonds of interpretation.
Let’s take the original metaphor and rework it. What happens if we explore the choice of verbs?
The inspector destroys the foundations of the Birling family.
The inspector attacks the foundations of the Birling family.
The inspector picks away at the foundations of the Birling family.
The inspector blows up the foundations of the Birling family.
’Destroys’ and ’blows up’ suggest malice and an evil intent which would be contradictory to Priestley’s purpose. ’Picks away’ suggests things are slow and slight. ’Attacks’ is certainly aggressive but suggests an ongoing process that hasn’t yet achieved destruction. A better word could be ’challenges’, but ’attacks’ might be the verb we decide upon because Priestley wants to undermine the foundations of the Birlings so that they are level with the Smiths or the Joneses.
Once you have explored the use of one metaphor, it is easier to introduce more:
Eric is a ticking time bomb.
The inspector is a cat among the pigeons.
Sheila is a lighthouse in a storm.
Sheila is the crack in the wall.
We can have fun getting students to explore each metaphor in detail. Here’s an example:
Sheila is the crack in the wall because she sees the potential of treating people fairly: she sees what is potentially on the other side. The rest of the characters are fixed and immovable by comparison. A crack getting bigger over time will cause a wall to fall down, and Sheila might be considered the start of this process. The events of the play show the crack forming and possibly later, after the conclusion, they will expand.
The great thing about the use of metaphor is that you have to develop and extend it in the explanation. A student will have to talk about the crack, the bricks, the other side of the wall and the process of change. In fact, the metaphor crosses the whole play and relates to the structure. At the start, Sheila is part of the wall: a person who accepts and maintains the idea of social inequality. As the play progresses she starts to see the error of her ways and challenges the rules governing society. She represents a crack which is not quite big enough to break the wall but, in time … Add a few quotations, and we are near a reasoned and developed interpretation.2
The great thing about using metaphor in non-fiction is that you automatically feel the need to explain the metaphor after using it. Too often I’ve seen students with great ideas, but their lack of descriptive prowess hinders the development. A metaphor necessarily creates an interpretation and begs explanation.
You can use personification and simile to develop the writing further. Honesty sleeps in Macbeth. Of course, students must use them sparingly and carefully and this is what I tell them, but it makes for some great interpretations — and some crazy ones too. Apparently, Macbeth is like a window cleaner because he is always trying to see through the muddle and confusion of things. (Oh, and avoid metaphors relating to popular culture. Describing the events of An Inspector Calls as being like the TV show Big Brother is unlikely to work.)