Metaphors are one of the first additions to our writing toolbox, usually paired with the simile in our high school English class. An extended metaphor expands the idea of a metaphor beyond a simple turn of phrase.
Extended metaphors can be stretched to last several sentences, paragraphs, or even pages, tying different elements together to make a deeper comparison between two ideas. In this article, I’ll dig deeper into what you need for a strong extended metaphor and what makes it work. Finally, I’ll give you a Story Weapon to mine deeper into your own metaphors.
An extended metaphor expands a simple comparison across sentences or pages to deepen theme, emotion, and meaning. By developing the tenor and vehicle, you can unify imagery in your prose and strengthen your storytelling impact.
What makes a metaphor?
Before extending metaphors, let’s take a quick look at the operative parts of a basic metaphor.
It is a figure of speech that compares two dissimilar things by stating one is the other, linking them symbolically with creative imagery. For example, you’ve probably heard these: time is money, her mind is a sponge, he is a ticking time bomb, and so on.
Tenor and vehicle
Another way we can think of metaphors comes from I. A. Richards, who was a writer, literary critic, and professor of English at the University of Cambridge. When he taught the subject in 1934, he defined the metaphor in this way:
“Fundamentally it is a borrowing between and intercourse of thoughts, a transaction between contexts. Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison, and the metaphors of language derive therefrom.”
To make the analysis and use of metaphors easier, Richards set up a great dichotomy in those “contexts” that might come in handy when you’re in a pinch.
- One context is the subject of the metaphor, called the tenor.
- The other context is the idea we’re comparing it to, called the vehicle.
So if we were to say, for example, that “propaganda is poison of the mind,” we should be able to break that up into the two contexts.
- The tenor or subject of the metaphor (what we’re really talking about) is propaganda.
- The vehicle (or the image we’ve invited for comparison) is poison.
This metaphor points to the qualities of poison as propaganda: toxic, damaging, contaminating, and dangerous. By specifying “of the mind,” the phrase sharpens the effect: propaganda doesn’t kill the body, but it corrupts our thoughts, judgment, and perception over time. All this in just one turn of phrase.
“The game becomes an extended metaphor of character defect. Every error he makes is so profoundly, so irritatingly typical of himself, instantly familiar, like a signature, like a tissue scar or some deformation in a private place.”
– Ian McEwan
Turning metaphor into extended metaphor
The extended metaphor takes the efficacy and beauty of the metaphor and expands upon it. The best way to understand something is to do it. So let’s take a look at a metaphor and then see what it would take to turn it into an extended metaphor.
Try to identify the tenor and vehicle in this metaphor example:
When Jorge got on his motorcycle, he felt his homesickness dissipate. Living on land wasn’t so different from being a sailor. With the roar of the engine, he set off and made a sea of the streets.
The tenor of this metaphor is the streets, or perhaps land in general. The vehicle is the sea; we’re briefly met with an image of an ocean forming on asphalt. Jorge’s motorcycle isn’t the vehicle for the metaphor here. It’s only the vehicle for Jorge.
Now let’s see what this metaphor looks like once we turn it into an extended metaphor.
When Jorge boarded his motorcycle, he felt his homesickness drown amidst the feelings of relief and familiarity. Living on land wasn’t so different from being a sailor. It had taken him a few months to get his sea legs back in the day; it would take him a few months to get his land legs now. The motorcycle would be his vessel and his apartment would be his port. His bed would be his hammock and his lover would be his drink. The tides of the ocean would be matched by the tides of traffic.
This could work. This could be a life. Once, he would have hoisted the mast. Now, he revved the engine and took off. Beneath his tires, the streets became the sea and the waves parted for Jorge once more. Always, always, sailing toward the horizon.
The tenor and the vehicle here are the same, though now we need a more general approach to ideas. The tenor of the simple metaphor was the street; now the tenor of the metaphor is Jorge’s life on land. It might help to point out that, even in the simple metaphor, we had used the metaphor to talk about Jorge’s life on land.
An extended metaphor is a way to use one literary device and reach for a larger idea. In the first example, we might’ve needed a few other literary devices to truly drive that point home. The vehicle is now not just the sea, it’s life on the sea. That includes the sea, but we’ve had to expand it just like we expanded the tenor.
An extended metaphor like this can be several paragraphs long or even several pages long.
Purpose of extended metaphors
Some ideas are hard to explain directly without sounding vague or preachy. An extended metaphor allows you to explore more abstract ideas through concrete imagery. Instead of telling your reader what something means, you let them experience it.
For example, while we have not all lived as sailors, we do tend to compare our present to the experiences we’ve lived through before, as Jorge is doing in our excerpt above. We’ve also probably all gone through times of feeling unmoored or lost in new surroundings. The extended metaphor turns his personal experience into something we can relate to on a universal level.
Themes and motifs float through the story of our lives and everything is connected through our continuous consciousness. This is what I.A. Richards means when he says “Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison.”
When you branch out into extended metaphors, you get to make new associations and connect contexts that might have otherwise been disparate.
Extended metaphors aren’t just pretty prose and symbols, either. They can become persuasive tools. The images they conjure can be used to frame how readers feel about an idea. Once they accept the metaphor, they will often accept the argument that comes along with it.
Your story weapon: How to magnify the meaning
As you look through your drafts and write new ones, take a moment to look at your metaphors. If there’s one that you really like, it might be a great writing exercise to turn it into an extended metaphor like I did here. You might find there’s a lot more there than you originally expected.
If the ideas of tenor and vehicle get in the way of your flow in the rough draft, don’t worry about them until you return to polish it in the rewrite.
Identifying the tenor and vehicle requires you to hone in on what the metaphor is actually about and if there’s room for it to grow into an extended metaphor. Not every metaphor is ripe for extension, but you’ll know it when you see it.
Consider the power an extended metaphor can bring to your work — not merely as ornament, but as a structural and thematic force within your story. Continue to refine your writing in one of my workshops: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day.
