Life Jacket Metaphors

One of the minor characters in Roberto Bolano's 2666, Barry Seaman, is giving a speech when he begins to talk of writing techniques. He says to his audience, "Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming. In that sense a metaphor is like a life jacket." He goes on to remind the listeners that some metaphors float while others sink to the bottom like lead. In that one passage, Bolano has illustrated both an original metaphor that is effective and one that is a cliche.

In my years of teaching writing to students, whether fiction or non-fiction, I have found it difficult to move students away from their love of cliches. In fact I made my point so strongly and so frequently through the years that I was known as "the teacher who hates cliches." Imagine my gratification, however, when the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks visited our university and said to students in a question and answer session, "Eliminate cliches, and you will have a publishable piece of work."

Of course, one danger is that an original metaphor of the time, for example Homer's description of "a rosy-fingered dawn," can become a cliche itself after centuries of overuse. I am sure also that Bobby Burns' simile of his love being like "a red red rose" was beautiful and effective in its day, but not after two hundred years and many declarations of such a love within greeting cards on Valentine's Day. For a writer, finding an effective metaphor or simile is a difficult task.

Metaphors and similes are used to bring concreteness to an abstract idea like love or to a scene like a sunrise when the usual words seem incapable of expressing the emotion one needs. They are indeed life jackets for one's writing. Let's make sure we use them effectively.