Read or reread the first two stanzas of “Flight 063” by Brian Aldiss, in which the speaker of the poem, a passenger on a plane, thinks about the Greek myth of Icarus, which tells of a boy who flew too close to the sun, melting the wax of his homemade wings.
Why always speak of Icarus’ fall? —
That legendary plunge
Amid a shower of tallow
And feathers and the poor lad’s
Sweat? And that little splash
Which caught the eye of Brueghel
While the sun remained
Aloof within its private zone?
394
That fall remains
Suspended in the corporate mind.
Yet as our Boeing flies
High above the Arctic Circle
Into the sun’s eye, think —
Before the fall the flight was.
(So with Adam — just before
The Edenic Fall, he had
That first taste of Eve.)
Notice how many different elements of figurative language Aldiss employs:
Allusions: the myth of Icarus, the painter Bruegel, the airplane manufacturer Boeing, and the biblical story of Adam, Eve, and Eden
Personification: “the sun remained / Aloof”; “Suspended in the corporate mind”; “Into the sun’s eye”
Metaphor: “a shower of tallow”
Too often figurative language is thought of as something only found in poetry, but it is also common in fiction and nonfiction. Look at this excerpt from Common Sense by Thomas Paine, which was written in 1776 in an effort to convince Americans to support the Revolutionary War. Identify as many examples of figurative language as you can.
The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ’Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent — of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. ’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.