Using Metaphor for Indirect Comparisons | Life is a Journey

[0:03]Metaphors. Now, one of the things that you will probably notice throughout this lesson is that metaphors and similes are very similar to idioms, idiomatic expressions.

[0:13]They're similar, but also different. So, metaphors, okay, are ways of comparing two very unrelated objects in a very indirect way.

[0:27]Okay, so this is an indirect comparison. Let's look at some examples.

[0:32]Okay, life is a journey. Okay, so here we have life and we have journey. Yeah?

[0:43]Life, which we all know, life, you know, we are living creatures, so we are living life.

[0:48]Okay, and journey. A journey is, you know, to take a trip from perhaps you're traveling from New York to Australia.

[0:58]Okay, you're taking a journey. A journey is a trip, travel, okay?

[1:04]Now, those two things are very unrelated, okay?

[1:08]So we're comparing life and a journey, traveling, and they're being, they're very unrelated ideas, but they're being compared.

[1:21]Life is being compared to the journey in a very indirect way. So life is a journey. Yeah?

[1:26]What this is saying is, is throughout your life, you are going on a journey, but the journey is not literal.

[1:36]It is a journey of, I suppose, living and learning, and even loving, maybe, who knows.

[1:43]He is the black sheep of the family. Okay, so he is obviously referring to a person, and he is being compared to a black sheep.

[1:56]Yeah, so again, two very unrelated items, a person and a black sheep.

[2:02]Yeah? So what does this mean? If somebody is called a black sheep, or someone says you are a black sheep, that is basically saying you are you're the different person within a group.

[2:17]You're the person who doesn't conform like everybody else does. You're the black sheep. You are different. Yeah?

[2:25]All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. This is a quote taken from William Shakespeare.

[2:35]I can't remember the play, the name of the play precisely, but I do remember this quote.

[2:38]All the world's a stage. Okay, the world. So here we are comparing the world.

[2:44]This is the the planet, the place where we all live, and the world is being compared to a stage.

[2:51]A stage is a place where actors perform.

[2:58]Yeah? So all the world is a stage. So what William Shakespeare is saying here is, our world, our globe, wherever we are, as individuals, we are performers.

[3:12]We are on a stage and we are performing. And all the men and women merely players. So here, all the men and women, that's everybody, merely players.

[3:24]So what is a player? Well, in William Shakespeare's age, which was quite a few hundreds years ago, a player was a word for an actor.

[3:35]So what William Shakespeare is saying here is, we are all on a stage, we are all performing, and we are all actors at every moment of our lives.

[3:49]Okay? So, metaphors, used to compare two very different, unrelated things, okay, in an indirect way.

[4:22]Let's take a look at some examples of using similes.