Language is used to explain the unknown, remember history, and express emotions. Literary devices like similes, metaphors, and synecdoche create mental images for readers. Similes compare two things using “like” or “as,” while metaphors merge two different things into a single entity. Synecdoche uses a smaller part to imply a larger whole. These devices are natural for children and can become idiomatic expressions over time.
Humans have always been driven to explain the unknown, remember their history, and express their emotions through the artistic use of language. Storytelling, poetry, song and drama are the vehicles by which every human experience has been captured and honored. One of the most powerful literary devices creates a visual image to help express some kind of meaning. There are many types of images that are used in literature, including similes, metaphors, and synecdoche.
In its simplest form, the term “images” simply means a group of words that create a mental picture. Writers know that a picture is truly worth a thousand words in the minds of readers, hence your attempt to combine vivid or unexpected verbs and specific nouns that will compel readers to visualize rather than intellectualize. Personifying is one way this is accomplished. One writer referencing a house on the block provided information but not an image. A writer referring to a dilapidated, gray house squatting on a treeless lot simultaneously created an image and suggested human traits.
Among the types of images that are taught to school children, the first is the simile. Most adults remember being trained in the definition: A simile is comparing two different things using “like” or “like.” It’s a functional definition, but it misses the heart of the matter. Similar finds the same sense of being within two things that, on the surface, seem to have nothing in common. It’s natural even for a small child, who might, for example, describe a garden hose as a water snake.
Another of the types of images is the use of metaphor. Like similitude, metaphor finds identification between two different things, but merges them into a single entity, creating a single image that reflects the qualities of both. This kind of imagery is also natural for children who enjoy making connections between things that have little in common. A child who says “I’m eating a tree” while gnawing on a broccoli stem is choosing the metaphor among the types of images to describe what is happening.
The synecdoche is another type of imaginative literary device. It’s almost like a literary nickname, not for a person but for a thing. Synechdoche is the name given when a larger thing or idea is implied by the naming of a smaller part of the whole. Through use and over time, synecdocal expressions can become idiomatic expressions that are used almost to the exclusion of the original name for the ensemble.
An example of this is the replacement of the term “worker” with the word “hand”. A farmer might say that he’s just taken on a new hand, and a ship’s captain will yell “All men on deck!” when the sea gets rough. Substituting parts for the whole is also common for objects. A sail represents a ship and a crown represents a king, for example.
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