Tuesday 21 December 2010

SIMILESimile has to do with an unusual comparison established between two distinctly different items, using words ‘like’ or ‘as’, which help create pleasure through the generation of surprise or shock. An example of simile taken from Matthew Oronsaye’s poem ‘Rainbow.
Here, human activity is compared to that of a bomber. Just the way a jet bomber destroys things on its way during wars, the person described in the poem also destroys human dreams and revelations. This comparison shows the destructive nature of the person written about in the poem. Human and Bomber which are not naturally in the same group of objects are classed together for a direct comparison for image making in poetry. Therefore, ‘ the girl is like her mother’ is not a simile because there is nothing unusual about the comparison. There is the high possibility that a human being will look like another since they are in the same class of humans or from the same family through the factor of gene or some other factors. Another good examples of simile are in Robert Burns’ poem: A Red, Red Rose and Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”: For details of the examples given, you can check:

Sunday 19 December 2010