Metaphors

Metaphors are a tool used to compare one thing to another. It is essentially saying that those two things are one in the same. The use of metaphors is a perfect way to make writing more creative and diverse. When giving examples, being able to relate something directly to a thing everyone knows is a good way to get the point across. It is important for students to understand how great this concept is. When using a metaphor as a teacher, the students will learn more quickly. If most students in the classroom are into sports, relate the subject of your lesson to a sports concept that means the same things. Use it as a metaphor to really help the student understand. You can do this with any particular interest or movement; all you have to do is find a way to connect the two.

I decided to concentrate on one of the top ten metaphors of 2005. The metaphor deals with hurricane season, and many broadcasters used baseball terms to relate the impact of the weather. The most popular of these baseball terms was catcher’s mitt.

The particular phrasing for the metaphor was that the “Gulf Coast was a catcher’s mitt for hurricanes.” This implies that all hurricanes for that year gravitated themselves to the Gulf Coast. The catcher’s mitt, or the Gulf Coast, caught all of the storms that year. It seemed to catch them more frequently in that year than in recent memory. The metaphor that is used helps to show that everything was being pulled into that general area. It was a lot easier for people to say this phrase than to try to go into a long description of how the Gulf Coast had attracted all these storms in its particular area.