Read Interestingly George Orwell’s Animal Farm Story and Synopsis

Introduction to Animal Farm Characters

In the first chapter of the book, all characters are quickly drawn for the reader. So, it would be quite wise to give some information about the major characters before proceeding with the summarized story of Animal Farm.

Old Major is a venerable old boar whose vision of a better life and his call for rebellion are the inspiration for the founding of 'Animal Farm'. 

Snowball is a young boar whose persuasive powers and theoretical intelligence make him a contender for the leadership of 'Animal Farm'. 

Napoleon is another young boar whose ambition and direct approach to gaining power cause him to win the struggle for leadership of the farm.

Boxer is a cart horse of great strength, loyalty, and small intelligence who is foremost in the projects requiring physical labor. 

Clover is a mare whose motherly concern for all the animals makes her a source of personal strength for all, especially during difficult times. 

Benjamin is a donkey whose skepticism about any kind of society and human nature remains unchanged. 

Moses is a raven regaling the animals with stories about the better life on Sugarcandy Mountain. 

Mollie is a mare with frivolous attitude and personal vanity. 

Squealer is a porker used by Napoleon to explain the actions of the pigs. 

Finally Mr. Jones, is the human owner of 'Manor Farm'.

Animal Farm Story

The story of Animal Farm begins with the meeting called by Old Major, twelve year-old boar, an elder statesman, and a visionary. After all the animals of the Manor Farm ran by Mr. Jones gather in the barn, Old Major starts his speech. He talks about the unhappy lot of animals in England, gives many instances about Man's cruelty to them, and tells them that he envisions a future happy time in which Man has been removed. He even lists the vices of Man and warns the animals that they should avoid if this future free state is to be achieved. All the animals listen to him attentively, and at last, share Old Major's simple view: Man is bad, animals are good, and enthusiastically sing the song 'Beasts of England', expressing his vision for the animals' future.

The location of Manor Farm is an ideal setting, isolated from outside interferences, and is available for establishing the pastoral life which Old Major dreams of. The Rebellion comes quite unexpectedly; the animals break into a storage shed and begin to eat their fill after Mr. Jones has left them unfed for a day. When Jones and his men try to beat the animals with their whips, all of them become very angry and attack the humans, and drive them off the farm. Thus, the transformation of the Manor Farm into Animal Farm realizes.

After the Rebellion and their tour of the house, they decide to preserve it as a museum, and paint the Seven Commandments of Animalism on the barn. As the pigs make these changes, Snowball and Napoleon are to be the leaders of the farm. Then, the dream of Old Major, who is dead now, quickly becomes a philosophy called 'Animalism', and is worked out exclusively by Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer.

When the harvest time comes, the animals realize that they must take over day-to-day operation of the farm. Under the pigs' directions, they finish the harvest in fewer days than Jones ever had. As a result, their food is abundant, and life is better. Thanks to Snowball's leadership, the animals very quickly take on the characteristics of 'civilized ' human society. On Sundays, they hold meetings to plan the next week's work and to discuss any decisions. However, Snowball and Napoleon disagree most of the times, and a real struggle for power begins between them. While the animals learn to read and write, the pigs' privileges as rulers increase and Napoleon deliberately takes puppies under his personal care. Snowball simplifies the Seven Commandments into one slogan "Four legs good, two legs bad", while Squealer, the propagandist for the pigs tries to justify the pigs' actions.

By the way, there appear rumours on other farms to join Animal Farm and rebel against the tyranny of their masters, and their masters try to discredit this new society by circulating rumours of immoral excesses in the animals' behavior and their failure to govern themselves. Thus, the Battle of the Cowshed is fought with humans. With Snowball in the forefront, animals lure the humans into a trap and quickly defeat them. After the victory, they decide to commemorate the battle and the Rebellion, by having two ceremonies each year.

After the victorious battle, the building of the windmill and the defense of the farm are the main two subjects to be dealt. As Snowball explains the necessity of a windmill which will provide many benefits for all the animals, they decide to build it. Upon this, Napoleon calls his dogs -which he has kept hidden-, they attack Snowball, and he barely escapes death, and runs away. Then, Napoleon claims that Snowball was an enemy, and that the plans for the windmill were his, and eventually takes over the charge of Animal Fann, establishing a kind of dictatorship. He abolishes the open meetings of Sundays, and instead, establishes an assembly during which the animals are given orders for the week to come.

Now, the animals' life is hard. They work a lot, the work on the windmill proceeds slowly, as a result, the second year is not as successful as the first was, but still, they believe that their life is better than it was under Jones. Napoleon starts establishing trade with humans, the pigs move into the house, sleep in beds, and encourage the use of titles when addressed to Napoleon. When the windmill is blown down in a severe storm, Napoleon makes the animals work harder for rebuilding it, and proclaims that Snowball is responsible for the disaster.

Like any dictator, Napoleon makes it appear as though everything is going well under his rule. So, although the winter has been hard, and the supplies are running low, he makes it appear that there are more supplies than needed, and arranges to sell eggs in order to buy necessary supplies to survive until spring. In addition, to prove his power, under the pretext of a rebellious attitude, he executes four pigs, threatens the animals by reducing their rations, makes himself inaccessible, and bans 'Beasts of England', the song that gave rise to the creation of Animal Farm.

Even though the animals are working long hours and harder than ever before, Squealer presents long lists of figures to prove that things are better than they ever have been before. Whenever there are outrages or questions of the hungry animals, Squealer pacifies them. When one of the farmers intends to take over Animal farm, 'The Battle of the Windmill' takes place, and the humans destroy the windmill which enrages the animals and disregarding their guns drive them away.

Thus, life continues to be hard, and rations are again reduced for the working animals. However, Squealer, once again, convinces them to go on with the life they lead. Meanwhile, a school is to be built for the pigs who begin wearing ribbons, brewing their own beer, appropriating all the barley grown on the farm for themselves. Upon the events, animals grumble a little, but finally accept them all. As time goes by, Napoleon is becoming more and more like Jones, and he makes Animal Farm into a class society with two groups: the ruling and the working class.

Finally, Napoleon becomes indistinguishable from Jones, and animals discover the truth when they watch the pigs and human beings together in the farmhouse. Pigs have taken on more characteristics of humans: they have begun walking upright, carrying whips, subscribing to newspapers, having a telephone, and wearing human clothes. The Commandments have been changed and eventually replaced by "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others". 

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Reasons Why George Orwell wrote Animal Farm? Animal Farm Background

Animal Farm Historical Context

Throughout the course of his life, George Orwell had joined the Indian Civil Service, lived among the tramps, worked as a teacher, and experienced both disastrous World Wars. In Malcolm Bradbury's words, "He had been down and out in Paris and London, followed the road to Wigan Pier, fought in Spain, and made his homage to Catalonia." Briefly, various factors and his experiences caused Orwell to write this striking political satire which basically criticizes the times in which he lived.

Animal Farm was first published on August 17, 1945, right after the Labor victory in the British general election, and in the same month, when U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing the Japanese surrender, and ending the abominable World War II.

Orwell had conceived the central idea for the novel in 1937, when he fought during the Spanish Civil War, with the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista) militia, and witnessed the communist purges of the Spanish leftists.

When Orwell began to write Animal Farm at the end of 1943, he was in an uncomfortable position. Until then, he had always believed that the Marxist Revolution of 1917 had been betrayed by Stalin, and according to Orwell Stalin's character as an assassin had been made obvious. His lack of respect for truth, consistency, and moral principles had been clarified by his rapid propaganda shift in 1939 towards Germany, and the return shift in 1941 when Germany attacked Russia. However, then, no one was courageous enough to blame Russia, because she was fighting bravely with Germany, and delaying the possible attack on England.

Orwell's fears about Russia were justified after the war when Russia took over many Eastern European countries, refused to cooperate with the Allies, alienated the West, and retired behind the 'Iron Curtain'. It was ironical that the time he started writing the novel coincided with the Teheran Conference where the Western Allies sat down with the communists to plan the overthrow of Germany. A similar meeting is held through the end of the novel, when pigs and men sit down for a compromise, and the revolution of 'Animal Farm' loses all its value.

With Animal Farm Orwell reflected the betrayal of the Russian Revolution by Stalin: the treacherous treatment towards Trotsky, the fudges of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and the abuses for their own advantage and survival.

Obviously, the main factor that caused, a socialist, George Orwell to write the novel was the Second World War, and the Fascist totalitarianism of the 1930's and 40's. After the disastrous war, most parts of Europe lay in waste, full of nazi extermination camps, in which many millions of innocent had died. The postwar years were an era of crisis for the liberal conscience, which had leaned leftwards in 1930's, and now realized many of its radical allegiances, and corrupted by the harsh realities of war, power and terror. During the war years Britain had undergone a quiet social revolution and now, had a new, weaker place in the world. Orwell, himself, resembled his country to a family with the wrong members in control.

In a way, Orwell wanted to be a recorder of the economic, social, and political problems of his age. In his essay, "Inside the Whale", he said, "The literature of liberalism is coming to an end, and the literature of totalitarianism has not yet appeared and is barely imaginable. As for the writer, he's sitting on a melting iceberg; he's merely an anachronism, a hangover from the bourgeois age, as surely doomed as the hippopotamus".

According to Orwell, an age of totalitarianism was now inevitable and the end has come not only for the aesthetic tradition of modem writing but for all moral independence as well. Orwell's book is a direct encounter with the processes of totalitarianism exploring the powers of terror, propaganda, and the process of revolutionary self-betrayal, and it emphasizes that freedom of thought and speech can be claimed as a transcendent Western heritage. In other words, the book totally reflects the author's thoughts and despair about the age he lives ill.

Another reason why Orwell wrote Animal Farm is that he wanted to point out that the failure often lay within the revolutionary process since its leaders ignore those whom the revolution was meant to serve. Orwell, also shared the 20th century hope of a socialist revolution which would transform and reconstruct the society. With his novel, he emphasized the fact that those for whom such revolutions were intended, were often the victims rather than the beneficiaries.

One of the important factors causing Orwell to create this political satire was his greatest fear that people easily forget what had happened in the immediate past. Thus, in a way, he rewrote the history and moral principles disguised in 'a fairy story', and reminded people, and especially leaders of Western democracy, of the facts. After discussing the factors that caused Orwell to write Animal Farm, let us have a look at the author's own words which would undoubtedly enlighten us about his intentions and expectations:

Being in despair, fighting a battle against the left from within the left - as he stated, in an introduction to a foreign language edition of Animal Farm, Orwell says that his main intention was to show how false the popular idea that Soviet Russia was a socialist state: he wanted to save socialism from communism. Animal Farm also possesses the qualities of a traditional work of art. Orwell said, "Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole."

Some critics read Animal Farm as an allegory of the Russian Revolution of 1917, such as an American critic, Dwight Macdonald. In a letter to him, Orwell stated, "I meant the moral to be that revolutions only reflect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job."

To sum up, the economic, social, and especially political problems of his age were the main factors leading Orwell, a man of great political and moral intelligence, to write the novel, a story touching at the heart of contemporary world affairs and anxieties.

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Free Download Shuggie Bain PDF : Man Booker Prize 2020 Winning Novel, Read Book Review

Shuggie Bain Book Review

International Man Booker Prize 2020 winning book, Shuggie Bain is a stunning debut novel by a Scottish writer, Dauglas Stuart who narrates the heart-wrenching story of a young boy and his alcoholic mother, whose love is only matched by her pride.

The novel is autobiographical by nature. Many incidents and facts are directly related to the life experience of Dauglas Stuart, the author of the novel. For Stuart, who had spent ten years chipping away at a draft at nights, on weekends, on planes, and in foreign hotel rooms on monthly business trips, it was the undreamt-of realization of a long-deferred dream. At 43 — he’s since turned 44 — 20 years into a career as a fashion designer, a trade he learned as a way out of the Glasgow tenement where he, like Shuggie, spent a misfit youth, he was an author at last.

The agonies of 1980s Scotland — driven by unemployment; the erosion of industries like shipbuilding, mining, and ironworking; and a guttering recession – are very real, but, outside maybe Trainspotting, these struggles are hardly well known in the U.S. Shuggie Bain is set in this world of men run aground after the closure of mines, women sunk under the weight of drink, families living week to week on public assistance and disability benefits. It speaks in a Scottish English whose rhythms, even whose vocabulary, can be alien for American readers.

A must read novel that cracks open the human heart, brings you inside, tears you up, and brings you up, with its episodes of unvarnished love, loss, survival and sorrow.

Shuggie Bain Summary 

This is a story about poverty, addiction and abuse. The book kicks off with Shuggie Bain, a 16 year old boy, and the protagonist who lives in a dirty bedsit on the Southside of Glasgow, Scotland and working on a supermarket deli counter. He sells some kind of food like burgers or hot dogs. He earns very little money and with that money he rents a small room. He goes to school but he has to skip a lot of days because he has to work toward his living and he tries to be normal.

The next part starts in the year 1981 and this is the beginning of his family story he at that time he lived with his mom, Agnes, his dad, Shug his two siblings, Catharine and Alexander (Leek) and his grandparents.  

Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good—her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamorous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion’s share of each week’s benefits—all the family has to live on—on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs.

Agnes’s older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety.

Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother’s sense of snobbish propriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is “no right,” a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her—even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Édouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.

3 Best Shuggie Bain Quotes

“If you want to survive, you need to try harder, Shuggie.”

“I mean it. You are going to be an amazing artist, and I’m going to get married, and between us we’re both going to get the fuck out of here and away from this dump.”

“Rain was a natural state of Glasgow. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial.”

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Free Download Paul Auster's Moon Palace PDF, Read Moon Palace Book review

Born in New Jersey, USA, Paul Auster is a popular postmodern novelist and earns numerous awards and prestige for his The New York Trilogy, The Book of Illusions, Sunset Park, Invisible, 4 3 2 1, Winter Journal, Travels in the Scriptorium, Oracle Night,  I Thought My Father Was God, The Brooklyn Follies.

Moon Palace Book Review

Paul Auster’s Moon Palace is centered around three main storylines and three main characters – Marco Stanley Fogg, Solomon Barber and Thomas Effing.

Paul Auster's Moon Palace is the story of Marco Fogg, an orphan who falls on hard times and then ends up working for a man who turns out to be both a famous painter and his grandfather. Marco is the narrator of the story as he starts writing down this story 20 years after some of the events have taken place.

Marco tells us about his family – his mother died when he was a boy. He never had a father, his uncle Victor raised him.

Marco Stanley Fogg inherits thousands of books from his uncle Victor , with whom he grew up. With these books he furnishes his apartment . He has to sell book for book to finance his living . After the last of the books has gone he is made homeless, lives in Central Park for months, survives on leftovers from picnics. He is in a severe mental crisis - he is no longer able to make decisions about his life!

Being seriously ill his old friend Zimmer from his university days and a young Chinese woman, Kitty Wu, with whom he had fallen in love months ago, find him. Zimmer had lived with Marco for a while and encouraged him to date Kitty. With her help he recovers and accepts a job as the person in charge for the blind and paralyzed Thomas Effing.

Fogg's main job is to write the story of Mr. Effing's life. Effing left his wife and his son to embark on an expedition along the western frontier as landscape painter. He survived an assassination attempt in the desert and settled as hermit in a cave formerly occupied by robbers where he stays for more than a year. Because his family had pronounced him dead, he could fabricate new identity after his return . He was not interested in his family any longer.

After long journeys across Europe, he had an accident that caused a paralization of his legs so that he had to retire in his New York City apartment. Shortly after the completion of his biography, Mr. Effing dies and Fogg finds his still alive son Solomon Barber to hand the notes over to him. It turns out that Barber is Fogg's father.

They try to find the cave mentioned in Effing's biography because they want to recover some lost paintings that are supposedly in the cave. During the expedition Barber is killed in an accident and Fogg who was left by Kitty Wu because they fell out with each other after Kitty had an abortion. The inner stability which Marco had gained by finding his father seems to have been lost.

He undertakes a journey on foot across the continent to find himself again. By the process of walking he finally manages to overcome his old identity and starts a life as a new person.

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Free Download Speculative Fiction The Handmaid's Tale PDF, Book Review, Summary

The Handmaid's Tale Book Review

Provocative, startling, prophetic, and more relevant than ever, the acclaimed dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale has become a global phenomenon. The book tells the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships. She serves in the household of the Commander and his wife, and under the new social order she has only one purpose: once a month, she must lie on her back and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant.

The Handmaid's Tale is what Atwood calls speculative fiction, meaning it theorizes about possible futures. This is a fundamental characteristic shared by both utopian and dystopian texts.  The possible futures in Atwood's novels are usually negative, or dystopian, where the actions of a small group have destroyed society as we know it. 

As a Dystopian novel, on the other hand, The Handmaid's Tale is not necessarily predictions of apocalyptic futures, but rather warnings about the ways in which societies can set themselves on the path to destruction.

The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1985, when many conservative groups attacked the gains made by the second-wave feminist movement. This movement had been advocating greater social and legal equality for women since the early 1960s. The Handmaid's Tale imagines a future in which the conservative counter-movement gains the upper hand and not only demolishes the progress women had made toward equality, but makes women completely subservient to men.

Gilead divides women in the regime into distinct social classes based upon their function as status symbols for men. Even their clothing is color-coded. Women are no longer allowed to read or move about freely in public, and fertile women are subject to state-engineered rape in order to give birth to children for the regime.

Unlike a lot of contemporary dystopian tales that pack in as much action and heroism as they can squeeze into a few hundred pages, The Handmaid’s Tale is more of a sociological perception of the world we live in, or more so, the world we could live in. It looks at the gender divide and offers surprisingly accurate insights into how the world (sadly) works, despite the fact that it’s set in a dystopian future.

The Handmaid's Tale Summary

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood the novel is set in the future where the United States of America has been replaced by a new totalitarian state called the Republic of Gilead. Gilead rose to power because they wanted to put a stop to the vast amounts of readily available porn prostitution and the amount of violence towards women.

Gilead is a totalitarian theocracy meaning it's a dictatorship run by a religious group on Eraser offer it is a handmade one of the limited number of fertile women left in America who have been collected stripped of their human rights and forced to bear children to the elite we follow our fringe journey as she attempts to survive this brave new world intermittently learning about her life before through a series of flashbacks.

The novel is set in a future version of the United States specifically Cambridge Massachusetts. Most of the population is sterile and birth rates have massively declined due to rising environmental degradation and sexually transmitted diseases claiming their desire to halt the declining birth rate. As their motivation the sons of Jacob have used military force to overthrow the Liberal Democratic American government and organizer new patriarchal society centered around reproduction.

The main character's name is Offred which is not her real name but she says that no one is allowed to call her by her real name anymore because her name is forbidden she is a handmaid and his job in Gilead is to be assigned to married couples in order to bear their children.

Offred is assigned to the commander and his wife Serena Joy and they look like this probably every month when Offred is at the right part of her menstrual cycle she is required to have personal impersonal worthless sex with the commander. However when this is taking place Serena is required to sit behind her holding her hands and there isn't a lot of talking or eye contact and  it's a bit awkward and it's quite hard to draw yeah and yes.

The novel uses a series of threads flashbacks to clarify what has happened in the years leading up to present day we find out that she has had an affair with a married man named Luke who had a daughter. We also find out that Offred was raised by her mother who had been a feminist activist and she had a best friend called Moira who was a tenacious rebellious lesbian who refuses to stand up against Gilead.

One day offered was turned away from her job she discovered that the sons of Jacob had overtaken the government through military force and had made it illegal for women to work and property Luke and Offred attempted to escape to Canada before their daughter was taken from them as since Luke was a divorcee their marriage was voided they were caught an Offred was taken to the red centre which is as scary as it sounds in the red centre women were indoctrinated and trained to be handmaids through violence coercion and biblical teachings.

She becomes a handmaid and is sent to a Commanders house where she meets him and his wife, Serena Joy. There, she is forced to have sex with the Commander monthly in order to bear children because of the drastically low birth rates. In this house, she is not allowed to move without permission but does go on frequent shopping trips with another handmaid, Ofglen.

Even in public, every citizen is watched secretly by the “Eyes”. Secretly, Ofglen introduces Offred to “Mayday” an underground group of rebellions. Offred is also introduced to Nick, a Guardian, in the Commander’s house as the Commander sends messages to Offred secretly. The Commander invites Offred to play scrabble with him, an illegal activity, and like this they form a relationship. However, a piteous one, as the Commander does this to fill his need of companionship and to make Offred’s life in the house bearable.

In addition, Nick and Offred also develop a small relationship which is further enhanced as Serena asks them both to have sex in order for Offred to become pregnant. Serena is interested in this pregnancy because she desires to raise a child of her own and ensures that this will happen when she promises to show Offred the picture of her daughter, whom Offred now knows is still alive.

Offred also secretly has sex with the Commander as he takes her into a hotel and asks her to pretend to be a prostitute. In this hotel, Offred meets Moira, and learns that she also works in the cheap hotel and in the end she has to submit to the government regardless of her wishes. Hearing this, Offred loses all hopes because she realizes that her living daughter will never recognize her, she has been disloyal to her husband, and her fate will be similar to Moira’s as she will also have to submit to the government.

As all this continues, Offred discovers that Ofglen has been replaced because the previous one was caught in her subversive activities and hanged herself before getting caught. Soon after, a black van, a signature of the “eyes” comes to take Offred away. Nick tells her to go as they are really “Mayday”. After this, her fate remains unknown. We don't know whether she's taken to freedom or execution the story finishes with an epilogue.

This is a pretty dense text as we watch offered grappling with extreme misogyny religious extremism and the loss of her daughter and a hideous new outfit were invited to speculate on just how dangerous apathy to the world around us could be and how many of us may take her own freedom for granted.

5 Best The Handmaid's Tale Quotes

1. “Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”

2. “We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.”

3. “Don't let the bastards grind you down.”

4. “A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”

5. “But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

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Metaphor: Definition and Examples, Types, Function, Metaphor Poems, Characteristics

 

Metaphor Meaning

The word 'metaphor' has come from the Greek 'meta’, meaning 'change’ and ‘phera' 'I bear'. In this figure, there is a transfer of a word from one object to another whereby a comparison is implied or an identity is shown though not formally or directly expressed.

Metaphor Definition

Metaphor is an implied comparison made between two different things or ideas.

The metaphor is an informal or implied simile. Here the words, as, so, like, etc., which are used in a simile to show clearly the likeness between two things, different in kind, are dropped. The comparison exists implicit in a metaphor in a statement of identity between two different objects.

Metaphor Examples

• The camel is the ship of the desert.
• He is the pillar of the state.
• Variety is the spice of life.
• The ice mast high came floating by. --Coleridge
• I will drink life to the lees. -Tennyson
• This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit. - Shakespeare
• She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest.

All these examples imply a comparison between two different objects. In the first case, there is a comparison between camel and ship', in the second, between 'ho and pillar', and in the third, between 'variety' and 'spice' In the remaining examples, the comparison is between 'ice' and 'mast', 'life and 'lees', 'rudeness' and 'sauce', and 'she' and 'angel'. In all cases, the comparison is, however, implied, not clearly expressed. The statement of identity is implicitly made.

In a metaphor, a comparison is, in fact, implied in the mere use of the term. Thus, the sentence-Our eldest son is the star of the family is a metaphor. Here a comparison is made between the son and the star, but it is not expressed by such words as, like, as, so, and so on. The likeness is only implied in the sentence. Similarly, had Burns said "O my love is red, red rose", there would have been a case of metaphor.

Metaphor Characteristics

 (i) A comparison is made.

(ii) The comparison is between two things different in kind.

(ii) The point of comparison is implied. [These essential features are all evident in the examples given above.)

N.B. It is to be carefully noted that in a metaphor, as in a simile, the things or subjects compared must differ in kind.

Metaphor Poems

(1)His crypt the cloudy canopy. -Hardy

This is a metaphor.

In a metaphor, an implied comparison is made between two things, different in kind.

Here a comparison is made between 'crypt' and 'canopy, two different things, and the point of comparison is the covering, given by either of them. This is, however, implied.

[Here a comparison is instituted between two different things, without saying so. The likeness is embodied in the sentence implicity.)

(2) Let me not stir you up,

To such a sudden flood of mutiny. - Shakespeare

This is a metaphor.

In a metaphor, an implied comparison is made between two unallied things.

Here a comparison is made between flood' and 'mutiny', two different things, in respect of force. The point of comparison is implied.

(3) Life seems to be an utterly unimportant by-product. -Jeans

This is an instance of the figure of speech, metaphor.

The metaphor consists in an implied comparison between two unallied objects.

In the present case, a comparison is made between 'life' and 'by-product in regard to their insignificance.

These two are unallied elements. The point of comparison is here not explicit, but implied.

(4) Your faith of rock

Shall yield to me. -Abercrombie

[ 'Faith' and 'rock', two unallied objects, are implicity compared.]

(5) I leant upon a coppice gate When frost was spectre gray. -Hardy

['Frost' is compared to 'spectre'. These two are unallied objects. The point of comparison is implied.]

(6) The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. -Gray 

An implied comparison is made between 'curfew' and 'knell', two unallied objects.]

(7) Thou transitory flower, alike undone

By proud contempt, or favour's fostering sun. -Goldsmith

[The implied comparisons are made between thou' and 'transitory flower' and 'favour' and 'sun'.]

(8) Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre. -Shelley

[Here a comparison between 'closing night' and 'the dome of a vast sepulchre', two unallied objects, is made. The point of comparison is implied.]

(9) Lowliness is young ambition's ladder. --Shakespeare

['Lowliness' and 'ladder, two unallied elements, are compared. The point of comparison is implicit]

 (10) Hope is the sauce of life.

In the above case two nouns 'hope' and 'sauce' are compared implicitly.

(11) I will drink life to the lees. (12) His efforts were crowned with success.

[ In each case, a verb and a noun-drink and life/crown and success are compared implicitly.)

(13) No tear could melt his stony heart (14) Golden opportunities are rare in life.

[Here adjectives and nouns-'stony' and 'heart' and 'golden' and 'opportunities'--are impliedly compared.]

Mixed Metaphor :

Sometimes, the inappropriate use of metaphors gives rise to the faulty metaphors known as mixed metaphors.

This arises when metaphors, drawn from different sources are combined in the same subject.

Mixed Metaphor Example

"It is sufficient to extinguish the seeds of pride"

- the metaphor is faulty, because pride is here compared to flame as well as seeds. If the verb 'extinguish' is to be used, then the word 'seeds' is to be changed to 'flame'. Again, if the noun 'seeds' is to be retained, the verb 'destroy' or 'uproot' ought to have been used.

The sentence," I smell a danger, but I will nip it in the bud", is also an instance of the mixed metaphor, for a faulty comparison of one subject with two different things is here made. In the following lines from Addison

"I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain

That longs to launch into a bolder strain."

- another familiar case of the mixed metaphor is found, for Muse is here compared by the poet to three different things a horse, a ship and a musical instrument.

Shakespeare's "To take up arms against a sea of trouble" may also be taken as a case of the mixed metaphor. Again, an intricate involvement of a metaphor within a metaphor is found in Shakespeare's

"O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of battering days."

(Sonnet XV)

Strained Metaphor:

A metaphor becomes strained, when the comparison becomes far fetched, or when the figure is dragged into irrelevant details. Such a strained metaphor tends to become obscure.

The following passage from Shakespeare's Macbeth may be taken as an example of the strained metaphor :

"Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced with his golden blood."

Here the comparison between gold and blood is far-fetched.

Next may be taken the famous passage from Julius Caesar

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune :

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries."

Here the metaphor is both improper and strained. It is wrong to consider that man experiences only one tide in his life. Again, there is actually no justifiable reason for connecting together two facts - to miss a tide and to sail in shallows. Lastly, the union of two words 'shallows' and 'miseries is inappropriate, for the former is metaphorical, while the latter, literal. In all cases, the metaphorical statement seems strained, not spontaneous.

Dead Metaphors:

In a dead metaphor, the identity shown is so common a usage that the discrepancy involved in its seems to cease almost or becomes dead.

Dead Metaphor Examples

‘The leg of a table’, ‘The heart of a matter’ etc. 

Metaphor Function

English prose and poetry throughout the centuries have been enlivened and enriched by the use of metaphors. "Metaphor, Dr. Johnson observes, is a great excellence in style when used with propriety, for it gives you two ideas for one: conveys the meaning more luminously and generally with a perception of delight. Needless to say, it excites the fancy and helps one to imagine things more vividly. Martin remarks: 'Metaphors, skillfully handled, are very effective and add ornament and, what is more important, clearness and force to writing. In the opinion of Sterling, a metaphor is usually a more lively and more pleasing mode of illustration then a simile, as it is more suggestive and leaves room for an agreeable exercise of the mind is detecting the points of resemblance implied in it.

Simile Vs Metaphor

As a metaphor differs from a simile only in form, not in substance, every simile can be compressed into a metaphor, and every metaphor can be expanded into a simile. A metaphor may, thus, be considered, Nesfield reminds us, as an 'informal or implied simile.’

There is a definite way of turning a metaphor into a simile. First, we shall have to find out the exact point of resemblance between the objects compared, then we should assign to each its proper action finally, comparison. the resemblance between these actions must be expressed by marker of

While a simile carries within its expression a viola marker of comparison (like, so, as, such, etc.), a metaphor carries no such sign. Thus, 'My love is like a red rose’ is a simile, while 'My love is a red rose' is a metaphor,

Metaphor Worksheet

1. I have measured out my life with coffee-spoons, (T. S. Eliot)

2. Do not waste a page on folly.

3. Man is a pendulum in the hand of Fate.

4. He is basking now in the royal favour.

5. How long can a rose remain hidden from the bee?

6. His efforts were crowned with success.

7. Annihilatiog all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade. (Marvell)

8. For the black bat, night, has flown,

The news of her elopement was a dagger to his heart.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes.(T. S. Eliot)

9. Our death is but a sleep and a forgetting. (Gray)

10. Thou dirge

of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchro. (Shelley)

11. Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thy ear. (Shakespeare )

12. The burnt out ends of smoky days. (T. S. Eliot)

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John Milton's Paradise Lost as an Epic or Epical Features in Paradise Lost

 Is Paradise Lost an Epic?

The epic poem has been regarded in all ages and countries as the highest form of poetry and there are great epics in almost in all the literatures of the world. Paradise Lost is the supreme masterpiece of epic poetry in English literature and rivals the works of the classical poets like Homer, Virgil etc. It is an "adventurous song" that “pursues things unattempted yet in prose and rhyme".

Epic poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts and therefore relates some great event in the most affecting manner. The key characteristics of epic poetry are:

(i) The subject or theme of the epic must be one, great and complex action. It must be either historical or at least probable.

(ii) The action of the story must be developed by a due mixture of narrative, dialogue and soliloquy. There are the dramatic and introspective elements in an epic. Minuteness of details and episodical digressions should form a part of epic treatment.

(iii) The principal characters must belong to the highest classes of society and must be elevated in their ideas, the general interest of the story must be concentrated on the hero.

(iv) The language must be simple, severe and dignified, 'perspicuous and sublime', as Garnett calls it. The measure or versification must be sonorous and dignified as befitting the subject.

(v) Lastly, the epic must teach a deep moral. These are the essential elements that every epic must possess to be worth the name.

Besides these, there are other epic conventions as Invocation to the Muse, epic similes, use of permanent epithets, repetition of lines and passages and the like.

Epic features are prominent in the first book of Paradise Lost. The first book begins with an Invocation to 'Heavenly Muse' in conformity to epic convention. In later prologues, Milton gives his Muse, a classical name Urania, goddess of astronomy, a fitting choice for a poem leading to Heaven like Dante and Tasso, Milton follows Virgil and Homer with one notable difference.

Milton asks his Muse to lead him higher than the "Aonian Mount" of the classical poets, since the subject of his epic is 'higher than theirs.’ Thus Milton's prologue begins as a classical invocation but with one exception that it rises to a Christian prayer to the Holy Spirit.

The prologue states the subject of the epic as 'man's first disobedience'. Milton is following his classical masters not only in the immediate introduction of his chief subject, but in the grammatical structure, which is highly Latinate. Milton however intends to transcend the classical with the aid of the 'Heavenly Muse' by dealing with the most profound of all problems, "to justify the ways of God to men."

Its subject is sublime and unique. It is the Fall of Man, an event of the greatest significance. To quote Dr. Johnson:

''The subject of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a colony, of the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of the worlds; the revolutions of heaven and earth; rebellion against the supreme king, raised by the highest order of created beings, the overthrow of their host, and the punishment of their Crime; the creation of a new race of reasonable creatures, their original happiness and innocence, their forfeiture of immortality and their restoration to hope and peace". The Bible had supplied him with the theme."

The scene of the action is universal space. The time represented is Eternity. The characters are "God and his creatures". Surely a loftier theme cannot be conceived by human imagination.

Again the action is one, entire and great. The unity of action is strictly adhered to. Milton plunges into the story at once by opening the epic with an infernal council of the rebel angels that plots the fall of man, which is the action he proposes to celebrate. The story develops without a hitch or discord, by means of quick narrative, dialogues, soliloquies etc.

Of the majesty, novelty and variety of the characters in the poem there cannot be two opinions. In this respect Milton has outdistanced even Homer. There are four principal characters in the story, - God, Satan, Adam and Eve. "We see man and woman in the highest innocence and perfection and in the most abject state of guilt and infirmity."

Satan is certainly not the hero of Paradise Lost. Satan represents a rejection of the conventional concept of the hero. In the first book, Milton presents the grandeur of evil. The speeches of Satan are magnificent and his figure is impressive - they represent the attractiveness of plausible evil. The villain-hero is evil on the grand scale, in speech as well as in action. Satan is presented in the first book as ambitious, proud, revengeful, deceitful, cunning and melancholy. His passion, energy and courage in his spoken words sweep away his followers. He impresses us as a great leader. He shows an indomitable courage and unflinching will:

"To be weak is miserable

Doing or suffering"

He exhorts his followers with high-sounding rhetoric:

"All is not lost ? the unconquerable will

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield

And what is else not to be overcome?"

Similes play very important part in an epic poem. In an epic poem, similes serve the purpose of illustration as well as decoration. We find many similes of this type in Paradise Lost, Book I. Milton compares the fallen angels to the thick autumnal leaves that "strow the brooks in remembers the quaint old story of sailors mistaking a whale for an island. Vallambrosa". In comparing Satan to the sea-beast Leviathan Milton remembers the quaint old story of sailors mistaking a whale for an island.

The moral of the poem is intrinsic and essential and not obtruded. Milton's purpose is to "vindicate the ways of God to man, to show the reasonableness of religion and the necessity of obedience to the Divine Law." This moral has been conveyed through the fable, most artfully constructed and beautifully told.

In point of style and versification, Paradise Lost is grand and the highest example of the sublime in literature. As Matthew Arnold has observed, "In the sure and flawless-perfection of rhythm and diction Milton is as admirable as Virgil or Dante and in this respect he is unique among us."

He tries to adopt Latin construction and Latin idioms in English. He even uses Latin words in their Latin senses, giving to the English language a kind of alien strangeness. His style is marked by condensed phrases and epithets, fitness of words to things, power of digression without loss of power to return, a majesty in the conduct of thought and a music in the majesty which fills it with solemn beauty.

Indeed, the name of Milton has become a synonym for sublimity and stateliness. The poem is written in grand blank verse and had the majestic march of music quite in keeping with the subject matter. These qualities fulfill the ultimate need of a grand style which is an essential epic feature of the poem.

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