I find there is an excitement in taking words, as Webster's Dictionary puts it, taking, "units of language...typically seen as the smallest such units of space...distinguished phonetically...", and making metaphors; creating words into brief moments for someone else to experience. Everyone in his/her life, at one time or another has had a moment when they have been left speechless. A moment on a cliff overlooking fierce, untamed waters, a sunset that sends blinding sparks off urban buildings, or a basketball game in which the underdog triumphs in the final seconds -- there is at least one time that everyone sees or perceives a sight that to them, is awesome. Something that in one's mind is distinguishable from any other moment and is too breathtaking, scary, or cool to describe in common vocabulary or phrasiology, for the emotions or feelings involved in that moment would not recieve due justice.
People behold scenes differently, so metaphors can vary greatly in the degree of imagery and the amount of emotion they elicit. This implies that they appeal to a larger discourse community rather than academic writing, unlike Jennifer Gebelein's term paper, "Giardia", which because of its nature has a more selective community. The discourse community, the writers and reader of metaphors may range from a seventh grade reading class to the C.E.O. of an international company.
This emphasizes the freedom that is allowed with metaphors, the fact that metaphors hold no boundaries on audience or creativity. As with any form of freedom, risk is involved. For many, writing metaphors is a way of risking vulnerablity, as one expresses their unique spirit and passion for things. Writing metaphors encorporates the cycles of freedom as they may pass through failure to achieve success. For example, as the immigrants who arrived from Ellis Island and experienced life in America, they learned that just because they were free, life was not going to be easy. Writing that perfect metaphor, the one that others can feel, one must work with freedom by taking time, playing with ideas, and experiencing trial and error.
In papers that I have written, I have used imagery and metaphors in the hopes that the reader will feel like they are watching a television show or hearing a story. This way they can experience the enjoyment of reading, and they are not just looking at some letters on paper. In one paper, which I wrote recently, I struggled with the freedom involved in metaphors. The paper was about a speaker that affected my life in some way. His name was Captain General Coffee, a naval aviator captured during the Vietnam War. The metaphor describes my impression of his feelings, as he described a time when he almost got caught for passing codes to other prisioners. I rewrote it several times, trying desperately to capture that moment and the result was, "He told of a close call they had one day, a day he swears his heart was beating faster than a stenographer could type."
In another essay, that I wrote for Writing 205 about the sport Crew, I found that the metaphors I used throughout the paper came easier to me. In this essay I was trying to explain a strength that the team was searching for, and that they found in a race. "Everyone in the boat found that strength, and the boat moved so fast it felt as though we were soaring on top of the water like a bird cutting through the winds and clouds in the sky."
I have always found metaphors aid me in my writing. I believe that sometimes when I want to express an idea and I am not sure how to, a metaphor can be the perfect solution. While I enjoy attempting to create metaphors I equally enjoy reading them. At times I read other metaphors twice in the hopes that I can see more clearly what the author is describing.
I enjoyed reading the article, "Semester At Sea", by Jennifer Gebelein, and easily comprehended her meaning. Her words were vibrant and allowed the reader to get a better feeling of what she was describing. In the beginning of the article she explains that she "...had a casual acceptance of nature and her abilities--I had also considered myself to be only a 'nut' in the huge machinery which operated life as we know it." Had Jennifer simply said that she felt small compared to nature, the sentence would have lost the passion that is contained within her perception of the moment, the passion that the metaphor conveys. I find that Jennifer's writing refutes James E. Porter article "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community," in which he portrays the idea to the reader that no thoughts are original. Whether Jennifer thought of that metaphor after seeing or hearing something else, her own creativity sparked a metaphor with a new twist.
It is metaphors like these that allow people to be free and creative with their thoughts. In a world where it seems as though everything has already been invented, metaphors allow people to be innovative and give them the opportunity to explain and explore their passions and perceptions with originality.
Works Cited
Porter, James. Intertexuality and the Discourse Community.
Rhetoric Review 5.1 (1986): 34-47.
Gebelein, Jennifer. "Giardia." Unpublished paper, Syracuse University (1993).
Gebelein, Jennifer. "Semester At Sea." Intertext 1.2 (1993): 10-13.