For Authors: Sense or Nonsense

This week: Sense or Nonsense

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Love is blind.

We all know what this means, but if you read it literally it’s nonsense. Love is an emotion, or maybe a state of being. It’s not a creature with eyeballs that can lose sight.

But when we read this, even for the first time, we have no trouble discerning the meaning. We intuitively understand that this isn’t meant to be literal, but rather figurative.

In fact, this particular metaphor is so ingrained in our culture, dating back at least to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, that it’s cliché. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it as a form of figurative language. This is an example of personification, a kind of figurative language that gives human attributes to non-human objects. We all immediately understand the meaning, even though it’s technically nonsense.

Authors use figurative language all the time. We see it in personification, as above, and in metaphor, in simile, and in other forms of figurative language such as hyperbole or “verbification.” Figurative language engages the reader beyond the rational act of interpreting words and sentences. Figurative language creates unexpected connections. This venture into the unexpected is like shining a light into shadows: it illuminates what was previously unseen.

Oops, there I go. The simile, “like shining a light,” is another form of figurative language. If I had said, “shines a light into shadows,” then it would of course have been a metaphor.

Even a cliché like “love is blind” can still be a window to the unexpected. Mae West, for example, said, “Look your best—who said love is blind?” This turns the familiar metaphor on its head and says love can be shallow. Oscar Wilde turned the cliché around in another way when he wrote, “Hatred is blind, as is love.”

Jerome Kern brought new life to this cliché when he wrote, “When your heart’s on fire, smoke gets in your eyes.” This lyric is pure genius. Here, we have a metaphor for love: a heart being “on fire.” Again, we have no trouble understanding that this doesn’t mean your heart is literally burning, but rather that you are feeling passionate. But once the metaphor makes the connection between passion and burning, it then reinforces it with “smoke gets in your eyes.” This logical connection adds power to the basic heat of the metaphor since it engages both the intuitive and logical parts of the brain. “Fire” primes us to expect what goes with fire, and so the presence of smoke makes the fire more powerful. It also connects the fire with the sting of smoke in your eyes, adding a subtext of physicality.

Shakespeare was a master of figurative language. Continuing with the emotion of love, everyone knows the lines from Romeo and Juliet:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

–Romeo and Juliet

Here, the soft light becomes Juliet who, in turn, becomes the sun. We know she’s not really an enormous, natural fusion reactor. Instead, we know that Romeo sees her as elemental and powerful, like the sun in the sky.

Shakespeare also used figurative language to turn nouns into verbs. In King Lear, for example, Edgar says, “He childed as I fathered,” to say the King’s children treated him in same fashion as Edgar’s father treated his son. Shakespeare uses this kind of thing to turn boring, rock-solid nouns into quicksilver verbs.

I know, more metaphors. What can I say? I love ‘em.

Myths and fables can be understood as extended metaphors. Mythical forms repeat across multiple cultures, in part because they illuminate universal values.

The great student of comparative religion, Joseph Campbell, once told of a radio interviewer who claimed that myth was a lie. Campbell responded, “No, myth is a metaphor.”

After some back-and-forth, Campbell eventually concluded the interviewer didn’t know what a metaphor was, and so he challenged him to give an example. After some hemming and hawing, the interviewer replied, “My buddy John runs fast. He runs alike a deer.”

Campbell replied in triumph, “No, that’s a simile. A metaphor would be, ‘John is a deer.’”

The interviewer answered, “No, that’s a lie. He can’t be a deer.”

Campbell was right. The interviewer didn’t understand metaphor.

If you don’t understand figurative language, you can’t understand fiction or myth. In some ways, works of fiction are extended metaphors for reality.

If, as an author, you don’t understand figurative language, your fiction will be as barren as a graveyard with no tombstones. Simile, metaphor, personification, and the other forms of figurative language breathe life into the words on the page. They are the light that illuminates your fictional world.

As humans, we understand the world through stories. Every culture has foundational myths—stories that reflect common values. These stories are metaphors that help us bring shared meaning to life and living. Myths, like fiction, aren’t supposed to be reality but rather illuminate reality. Washington didn’t actually say, “I cannot tell a lie.” Instead, this myth reflects a shared commitment to truth and honesty, even when we might profit from a lie.

Written words are but a shadow of the real world. Words come out of the darkness only when they touch a reader’s heart. Words can be pregnant with comedy, tragedy, adventure, and even with truth. Figurative language quickens the words and energizes readers' imaginations. As authors, we can strive to do no less than Ernest Hemingway, who said: “I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea, a real fish, and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough, they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true.”

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