Metaphor for Flame

         A flame of hope lightened me inside as I finally found the most alive word in English---flame. The use of flame as a metaphor often appears in literature or any sort of articles. In literature, there is a flame of love; in business articles, a flame of hope (during economic depression); a flame of rage, in political columns. Oftentimes, flaming is used in the same way as flame does. Both of them describe people’s strong feelings inside. However, why do people use flame to express their emotion?

         In general, flame is a hot glowing body of ignited gas produced by something on fire. It is burning gas radiating heat, thus people feel it and turn it into an image of strong feelings. The surge of emotion sometimes could not be described but could be contagious as if it were a flame of fire. Flame comes with fire, which symbols, most of the time, strong feelings or impulsions. Some metaphorical meanings for flame derive from fire consequently. Flame is popular because people can feel it and take it as a counterpart of their inner feelings.

         There are many usage of flame as a metaphor, and they are all slightly different. "The minde is sometimes a Bull, sometimes a Serpent, and sometimes a flame of fire" is stated by Tubbe, Henry (1618-1655) in his piece of work about human nature. There is another example, “From heaven my strains begin; from heaven descends

/The flame of genius to the human breast, /" It is a metaphor for the vitality of imagination and creativity. Litterateurs describes the everlasting and vigorous mind or nature or feelings by the image of flame—glowing, heating and streaming.

         I think most importantly people are familiar with the term of flame. Because we know how real flame look like and feel like, we impose our feelings on the word. The key point is that we accepted and believed flame is the right word for the status we want to describe. Thus, the image of flame as a metaphor imprinted on our memory as it was widely used in articles and literature.

         The flame spreads like wild fire as its popularity grows among people and on paper. Where this fire would be put out? I think the answer is it will never die out in people’s heart. We gave our strong feelings an image of flame. Just as it looks and feels like, flame is burning gas, a mysterious glow of color and the steaming emotion inside people.