Why This Object?
IntroducedSelection matters as much as traits
- The function of a simile relies on the selection of the objects being compared as well as the traits of the objects.
- Units 2 and 5 taught the traits; this adds the selection itself.
- So like a rope and like a wire can transfer the same quality and still mean different things.
Compare someone to a rope or a bridge: the traits matter, but so does why the speaker passed up a ladder.
The function of a simile relies on the traits of the objects and on...
So two objects with the same trait can still mean different things.
An object brings its world with it
- A rope belongs to boats, farms and work; a wire belongs to machines, fences and current.
- Even when the transferred trait is identical — tension, strain, breaking — the surrounding world differs.
- That world is what the selection contributes, and it is analysable.
Select all the things a rope brings with it that a wire does not.
Tension is the shared trait — the rest is what the selection contributed.
The selection is evidence about the speaker
- Whoever made the comparison reached for something from their own world.
- A sailor's simile and a clerk's simile can carry the same trait and describe two different people.
- So ask not only what transferred but where the comparison came from.
What does this comparison contribute?
Sort each element of his patience was stretched like a rope.
Test a selection by ____ a different object that carries the same trait.
What is lost is exactly what the original selection contributed.
Two objects can carry the same trait and still mean different things. Like a rope and like a wire both transfer tension, but one belongs to boats and work and the other to machines and current — and the CED counts that selection as part of the simile's function.
The choice of comparison object is evidence about whoever made it.
A sailor's simile and a clerk's can carry the same trait and describe two different people.
Test by substitution
- Replace the comparison subject with another that carries the same trait.
- What is lost is exactly what the original selection contributed.
- That test takes ten seconds and produces a whole sentence of analysis.
Put the selection pass in order.
The substitution is what turns a hunch into a sentence you can write.
A selection pass
- Name the transferred trait, as before.
- Then substitute a different object with the same trait and say what is lost.
- Finally ask what the speaker's choice of that object says about them.
His patience was stretched like a rope. Substitute like a wire: the strain survives, but the boats, the farm and the human hands are gone. The rope was chosen by a speaker whose world contains work you do with your hands — and the story is about him losing it.
A simile's function relies on the selection of the objects being compared as well as their traits. An object brings its world with it, and the selection is evidence about who made the comparison. Test by substitution: replace the object with another carrying the same trait and name what is lost.