And what I said to them both
Simile: “Oh Metaphor, how dare you flaunt your arrogance? How dare you press two things together until they flatten into one?”
Metaphor: “What irony! That you would use me in an insult against me! And is it I who presses too hard? Or you who shies away from intimacy? You who are afraid the two won’t get along so well after all? I take pride in my duties to language. Duties that I fulfil with conviction you will never possess.”
Simile: “You confuse brashness with conviction. I provide the courtesy of subtlety. A sublime power of suggestion. Those who speak and write through me realize your presumptuousness.”
Metaphor: “If we are to compete in powers of suggestion, your inability to commit guarantees your loss. It is my presumptuousness that convinces the two things to a dance, a dance in which they step on each other’s toes, laugh, and hug until they agree to a second date filled with candid conversation. Simile, you instead sling silt and gravel at the two, and dismiss them as they trip and fall.”
Simile: “How dare you! Metaphor, you whip your tongue like a scorpion’s tail, but your slander is as flimsy as bee’s venom. In both argument and prose, you have crossed all bounds!”
Metaphor: “I care not for any bounds that you impose upon me, Simile. You are the discarded training wheels. The fence that guards a wild eagle. The carnivore that drinks from the life-blood of eloquence. The rust that races across a celebrated edifice. The shattered glass that looks upon a speck of dust and thinks it dead. Simile, you have no place beside me.”
Simile: “Careful, Metaphor. In your rambling, you have fast lost focus. You have slipped into confused exaggeration. I concede insofar that you are more powerful than I. And that I am guilty of enjoying you, sometimes misusing you. But your power veils vast responsibility dressed upon those that require your illumination. You are not invested as a puzzle or an encryption. You are not the hidden connotations but the exposed sensations. You are the synesthesia that wells up from visceral depths. You allow us to see, smell, feel, and taste words so as to reveal, not obfuscate. Your hubris is unbefitting of your humble purpose.”
Some sources consider Metaphor and Simile to be entirely divorced. Some see Simile as a derivative of Metaphor. But most definitions agree that both are figures of speech used to describe things or ideas by way of creative comparison. Metaphor is a “direct or implicit comparison often made with a copula,” while Simile is an “indirect or explicit comparison that uses the words like or as.”
But what good does this distinction do us? Simile and Metaphor fill similar niches in language, but which one is better and how should you decide which to use when? Despite examples comparing the use of Simile and Metaphor, one question pervades unsolved: is it better to compare implicitly or explicitly?
In the dialogue above, I have personified Simile and Metaphor and thrust them into this very conflict. I have adopted a theme of chaos to order. Simile opens the conversation enraged that Metaphor thinks itself superior. Metaphor retorts that it’s justified in thinking so. And so the two argue while blatantly showcasing themselves in their diatribes.
Simile’s final monologue is the shift to order. Simile makes some concessions, cools down the room, but does not change its assertion that Metaphor is “arrogant.” Does Metaphor exist only to make palpable the relationship between two things as Simile suggests? And is Metaphor justified in its claim to superiority?
Me: “Oh Simile, can Metaphor not obscure or abstract so as to invoke varied imagination? Although most writing and speech must be accessible to be of value, there are also contexts which allow and sometimes promote ambiguity: fiction such as poetry, myths, fables, and legends. Some works revel in their meandering path to nowhere. But even in non-fiction, a kaleidoscopic view can help shake up preconceptions and reach unexpected conclusions. And these things you can do also, Simile. So Metaphor, why do you believe yourself superior? Is it that your comparisons are more “intimate” and fill a more flexible syntactic niche? I agree that this is an advantage. You do not require the words like or as, and instead embrace a large class of implicit connectors. With some effort and restructuring, we can turn Metaphor into Simile. We might make the comparison more clunky, but do we gain anything in return? Simile, I think you tame Metaphor. You hold back its arrogance and allow choice in how far we take a comparison. In isolation, this benefit may be small. But Simile, you can also bring contrast and diversity to the lull of extended metaphor. Your place in language is in broadening it.”