Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays

April 6, 2010 12:35 PM

"His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free."

Previously (some crossover, but different).

Hopefully these students will continue honing their craft. Some of them have Bulwer-Lytton potential.

posted by cleancut (22 comments total)

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Oh, come on. Why is this so bad? Kid is clearly going for vintage She Was A Hotel Detective fare.
posted by kid ichorous at 12:41 PM on April 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Boy howdy I think the first time I got this email forward I laughed so hard I just about dropped my buggy whip and spilled my cherry phosphate all over my pantaloons.
posted by Nothing... and like it at 12:41 PM on April 6, 2010 [9 favorites]

I read this very same list about 10 years ago in a college writing class. Then, it was billed as being the result of a teacher asking his students to come up with the worst metaphors they could think of.

At any rate, these are too clever to be the result of bad high school writing.

That's not to say they aren't funnier than a lion. A lion that's a stand-up comedian. A really good one.
posted by Darth Fedor at 12:42 PM on April 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Most of those are great. I wish I could write like...um, you know, like they write!
posted by The Toad at 12:45 PM on April 6, 2010

SNOPES.
posted by edbles at 12:46 PM on April 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

Analogies and Metaphors Similes Found in High School Essays... no?

Though now I'm wondering if maybe similes are considered a kind of metaphor these days. It seems like the kind of rule that might have changed since I stopped paying attention in high school.
posted by juliplease at 12:50 PM on April 6, 2010

Most of those are great. I wish I could write like...um, you know, like they write!

Like an explosion in an analogy factory?
posted by delmoi at 12:50 PM on April 6, 2010

edbles: Good call. I search google in general for random phrases, metafilter, but I didn't search snopes. Whoops!
posted by cleancut at 12:51 PM on April 6, 2010

Oh, come on. Why is this so bad? Kid is clearly going for vintage She Was A Hotel Detective fare.
posted by kid ichorous at 3:41 PM on April 6

My tastes run to the more existential, so I prefer more She Was A Hotel, Detective fare
posted by Pastabagel at 12:52 PM on April 6, 2010

It's really interesting. The sort of devolve into 3 categories, overly detailed to the point of distraction:
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a Guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30

mismatched pairs
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

and plays on other categories of codified speech
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.

But my favorites are the comparison of thing to self disguised as other thing:

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.-Unknown

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
posted by edbles at 12:58 PM on April 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, we used to do that in High School on purpose.

Good teachers would give us full marks, bad teachers suck like those outlets in quaint Mexican small hotel swimming pools that are placed at just the right height that when you are 7 years old and have your arms braced on the concrete slab at the edge of the pool ready to push yourself out you suddenly notice a really interesting new sensation in your Speedos and you just stay there confused and ecstatic for a couple of minutes and then your aunt starts laughing at you and your dad yells at you and your mother says how fast kids grow up and you are confused.
posted by dirty lies at 1:00 PM on April 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. -Russell Beland, Springfield

That one isn't strained, it's lifted:

[The Vogon ship] hung in the air in exactly the way that bricks don't
posted by gurple at 1:13 PM on April 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

It was a dark and stormy night...
posted by infini at 1:14 PM on April 6, 2010

I came here with the Snopes link, but left like a dog beaten in a fight with my tail between my legs trailing droplets of blood and other body fluids...
posted by HuronBob at 1:16 PM on April 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

This made me laugh like a motherfucking laughbot set to "guffaw".
posted by jefbla at 1:21 PM on April 6, 2010

I read HuronBob's descriptive metaphor and raced out of the room with my fingers heaving at the keypad on my stomach
posted by infini at 1:22 PM on April 6, 2010

keyboard, damn ipad saturation meh
posted by infini at 1:23 PM on April 6, 2010

Nothing's ever going to beat Raymond Chandler's "He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake." Pure genius.
posted by Catseye at 1:33 PM on April 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

My tastes run to the more existential, so I prefer more She Was A Hotel, Detective fare

One morning, as Gretchen Samsa twisted herself loose from an unparsable literary cliche, she found herself folded and drawn into the most rigid and impossible shape, a cursive blown into glass. Her whole being appeared to have chilled into just one single world, tall and italicized, left by a neon pen: VACANCY. It didn't take a detective to spell it out - she had become the Paris Hilton.
posted by kid ichorous at 1:36 PM on April 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.
posted by drjimmy11 at 1:50 PM on April 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

Like jewels in a crown, the precious gemstones glittered in the queen's round, metal hat.
- Jack Handey
posted by Oriole Adams at 2:05 PM on April 6, 2010

I don't care where this came from. Its genius is undeniable no matter the provenance: Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
posted by Fezboy! at 2:13 PM on April 6, 2010