Hyperbole and metaphor are literary devices used to express ideas figuratively. Hyperbole exaggerates reality, while metaphor encompasses various devices. These techniques enhance the art of poetry and prose, elicit emotional responses, and reinforce themes. Shakespeare’s Macbeth contains several metaphors, including conceit, simile, and metonym, to reinforce the theme of imperfect clothing. Hyperbole is a type of metaphor based on exaggeration, used to express strong emotions. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire uses hyperbole and metaphor to reinforce the theme of superiority and strength.
Hyperbole and metaphor are literary devices in which figurative language is used to express an idea rather than a literal statement or description. The term metaphor encompasses a number of these devices, with hyperbole being the specific subset relating to the exaggeration of the real. Both poets and prose writers often employ hyperbole and metaphor to enhance the art, reinforce the theme of their works, and elicit emotional responses.
The language of hyperbole and metaphor often comes in the form of images or visual guides that can help a reader grasp an intangible feature. In William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, for example, the title character speaks of “sleep that mends the undoing of cure.” The first metaphor in this sentence concerns sleep, which in scientific terms is a period of hormone-activated rest but in Shakespeare’s parlance is a knitter. The second metaphor implies “care” or concern, a state of mind described as a frayed garment.
Shakespeare’s metaphor succinctly describes how sleep eliminates disturbances of the mind and does so using literary techniques thought to be of aesthetic value in their own right, such as alliteration and iambic pentameter. The work contains several other metaphors that pertain to imperfect clothing and reinforce a thematic point of the work. Macbeth uses murder as a way to rise through the Scottish royal ranks to become king, and scholars often interpret images of the clothes that are tattered or too loose on Macbeth as Shakespeare’s metaphorical message about how bad the various titles that Macbeth holds suit him.
The repetition surrounding Macbeth’s clothing illustrates the literary term conceit, which is an extended literary metaphor. Another common type of metaphor is the simile, a comparison of two things using the word “like,” “like,” or “that.” A metonym, meanwhile, refers to an object not by its proper name but by something familiar associated with it. For example, the use of a chariot to represent the inevitable passage of time towards death dates back to Greek mythology. It emerges in “To His Coy Mistress” by the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell – “the winged chariot scurrying by” – as well as in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by the American poet Emily Dickinson, which includes the line “A carriage carries the speaker, death and immortality”.
Hyperbole is also a particular kind of metaphor, which is based on exaggeration. The writer who uses hyperbole distorts not only the nature of a situation but also its scale. The purpose of him may be to express strong emotions or arouse sympathy for himself.
A Streetcar Named Desire by American playwright Tennessee Williams includes hyperbole and metaphor throughout. Stanley Kowalski, the main male character, laments how his wife and sister-in-law have compared him to animals, such as a pig and a monkey. In response to their metaphors, he asks, “What do you think you are, a pair of queens?” Stanley probably correctly assesses that women think they are better than him while knowing that they don’t literally consider themselves royalty. He probably he engages in hyperbole in an outburst of anger and displays strength to try to quell the condescension of his relatives.
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