Unit 8 · Topic 8.1

8.1 Comparisons that connect with an audience

Writers use similes, metaphors, analogies and anecdotes to link a new or difficult idea to something the audience already knows. A comparison only works if the audience shares the knowledge it depends on. Analyzing a comparison means explaining what it carries over from the familiar thing, and why it suits this audience.

Key terms

simile
metaphor
analogy
anecdote
audience

Four kinds of comparison

Comparison	What it is	Example
Simile	A comparison using like or as	Rumors spread like a grease fire.
Metaphor	A comparison that says one thing is another	The tax code is a maze.
Analogy	An extended comparison that reasons from a familiar case to an unfamiliar one	Skipping sleep before a test is like draining a car's gas tank before a road trip.
Anecdote	A short story used to illustrate a point	A brief account of one family's struggle to pay a medical bill

Why comparisons persuade

A comparison borrows the audience's existing feelings and understanding. If readers already know that a house needs a solid foundation, calling a policy "the foundation of the economy" asks them to feel that the policy is basic and necessary. The comparison does argumentative work, often without the reader noticing.

Anecdotes work by making a large issue human-sized. Statistics tell readers how many people are affected; an anecdote shows what it's like to be one of them. That's why writers often pair the two.

The audience has to share it

A comparison fails if the audience doesn't know the familiar side. An analogy to a 1950s radio show might confuse a teenage audience; a comparison to a video game might confuse a retirement-home audience. Effective writers choose comparisons from their audience's world: their religion, history, jobs, sports or daily routines.

Comparisons can also fail if they carry the wrong feelings. Comparing a school dress code to "a prison uniform" may energize students but offend the parents and administrators the writer needs to persuade.

In 1776, Thomas Paine answered the claim that America needed Britain because it had prospered under British rule. That reasoning, he wrote, is like saying "because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat." Every reader knew children outgrow milk, so the analogy made independence seem like natural growth (9.3).

Analyzing a comparison

Name both sides: what is compared to what?
Say what carries over: which qualities or feelings move from the familiar thing to the subject?
Explain the audience link: why would this audience know and respond to the familiar side?
Connect to purpose: how does the comparison move readers toward the writer's goal?

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Lincoln's house divided
In June 1858, Abraham Lincoln accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate. His audience was Republican delegates who opposed the spread of slavery, at a time when many Americans hoped the country could go on half slave and half free indefinitely. He said (public domain; text from Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865): "In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,—I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." ("It" in the first sentence refers to the agitation over slavery.) Explain how Lincoln's comparison serves his purpose with this audience.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Identify the comparison: the nation is a house; the slave states and free states are a division inside it.
2. Step 2: Note the source: "A house divided against itself cannot stand" echoes a saying of Jesus in the Gospels, one Lincoln's Bible-reading audience would recognize at once.
3. Step 3: Explain what carries over: a house can't stay standing if its parts work against each other. Transferred to the nation, the idea makes the current split seem unstable, not a permanent compromise.
4. Step 4: Notice how he extends it: "I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided." He keeps the metaphor going to predict an outcome that is less frightening than collapse.
5. Step 5: Tie to purpose: Lincoln wants his listeners to see that the nation can't stay half slave and half free, so they must commit to stopping slavery's spread.
Answer: Model paragraph: Lincoln compares the nation to a house to persuade his listeners that the split between slave and free states cannot last. By quoting a biblical saying his audience would know by heart, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he borrows scriptural authority for a political prediction. Everyone knows that a house whose parts pull against each other is unsafe, so the metaphor turns the country's division from a workable compromise into a structural danger. Lincoln then extends the image to calm his listeners: he does "not expect the house to fall," only that it "will cease to be divided." The familiar picture lets him warn of a crisis without predicting the Union's destruction, pressing his listeners to decide which "one thing" the nation will become.

Common mistakes

Identifying a comparison ("he uses a metaphor") without explaining what qualities carry over or why they matter.
Ignoring the audience. A comparison's effect depends on what this particular audience knows and values.
Confusing an analogy, which reasons from one case to another, with a quick simile or metaphor.

On the exam

Reading questions often ask what a comparison suggests or why a writer includes an anecdote. The answer usually links the familiar thing's qualities to the writer's claim.
In writing questions, if a draft needs an example or comparison for a specific audience, pick the one drawn from that audience's experience.

Connected topics

Videos

Analogy: Explanation, Effects, Example | AP Lang Rhetorical Strategies
Ms. Peer EditorWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
How to Use Examples, Analogies, Similes and Metaphors when Writing your Essay
Mister MessingerWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
The art of the metaphor - Jane Hirshfield
TED-EdWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Anecdotes: Explanation, Effects, Example | AP Lang Rhetorical Strategies
Ms. Peer EditorWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Arguments from analogy
Philosophy ClassroomWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 8.1 Comparisons that connect with an audience. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.

[. . .] 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.

[. . .] I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connexion with Great-Britain, that the same connexion is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true, for I answer roundly, that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power had any thing to do with her. The commerce, by which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.

[. . .] Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), from the section "Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs." The pamphlet, written for a broad colonial readership, argued for independence from Great Britain. Original spelling kept; ellipses mark omitted text.

Question 1 of 4

In paragraph 2, the comparison to "a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak" mainly suggests that

Question 2 of 4

Paine's analogy "because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat" responds to the argument that America needs Britain because it has flourished under British rule. The analogy suggests that

Question 3 of 4

In paragraph 4, the statement "In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet" supports Paine's argument by

Question 4 of 4

Paine draws his comparisons from trees, children and planets. For his broad colonial audience, the main advantage of these comparisons is that they

0 of 4 answered