Aim for FiveEnglish Literature

Unit 5 · Topic 5.5

5.5 Extended metaphors

An extended metaphor develops one comparison across several lines or a whole poem, adding details, similes and images as it goes. A conceit is a kind of extended metaphor that links two very unlike things in a surprising, clever way, as in some of John Donne's poems. You learn to trace how such a comparison develops and what it argues.

Key terms

  • extended metaphor
  • conceit
  • metaphysical conceit
  • main subject
  • comparison subject

From metaphor to extended metaphor

A simple metaphor makes one comparison and moves on. An extended metaphor keeps the comparison going, adding new details that match the main subject with the comparison subject point by point. Each new detail carries over another quality.

Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" (see 2.6) is an extended metaphor: hope perches, sings, survives storms and keeps people warm, all bird-like actions developed across the poem.

Comparisons focus on traits

A metaphor isn't about two whole objects; it's about specific traits they share. When you analyze an extended metaphor, ask which traits the poem highlights at each stage, and how the comparison shifts as it develops. Comparisons can also carry a perspective: how the speaker feels about the main subject shows in what they compare it to.

Conceits

A conceit is an extended metaphor that compares two things so unlike that the comparison seems surprising, even strange, at first. The poet then makes it work through clever reasoning. The term is especially linked to a group of 17th-century English poets, including John Donne and George Herbert, sometimes called the Metaphysical poets; their comparisons are called metaphysical conceits.

The pleasure of a conceit is the surprise: how can love be like a geometry tool? The meaning comes from the explanation.

Context shapes the metaphor

What transfers in an extended metaphor depends on the poem's situation. A comparison between love and a journey means one thing in a poem about a new couple and another in a poem about a death. Always connect the metaphor to what is happening in the poem.

Tracing an extended metaphor

  • Identify the main subject and the comparison subject.
  • List each detail that develops the comparison, in order.
  • For each, say which trait carries over.
  • Ask how the comparison builds to a final point.

Why poets extend a comparison

Extending a metaphor lets a poet build an argument through images instead of plain statements. Each new detail is like a new step in a proof. By the end, the reader has been led, piece by piece, to accept an idea that might have sounded strange if stated outright. That's why, when you write about an extended metaphor, it helps to follow it in order, showing how each step adds to the case.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

  1. Example 1

    A conceit about love and distance

    In John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (first published 1633), a speaker about to leave on a journey tells the woman he loves not to grieve. (The biographer Izaak Walton said Donne wrote it for his wife, but the poem itself never says so.) He compares their two souls to the two legs of a drawing compass (the hinged tool used to draw circles). Spelling is as in Herbert Grierson's 1912 edition: "If they be two, they are two so / As stiffe twin compasses are two, / Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show / To move, but doth, if the'other doe." (lines 25–28) and "Such wilt thou be to mee, who must / Like th'other foot, obliquely runne; / Thy firmnes makes my circle just, / And makes me end, where I begunne." (lines 33–36). How does the conceit develop the speaker's argument?

    Show the solution
    1. Step 1: Identify the parts. Main subject: the two lovers' souls. Comparison subject: a compass, with one fixed leg and one moving leg.
    2. Step 2: Trace the details. The beloved is "the fixt foot," staying at home. The speaker is the leg that moves ("runne"). When one moves, the other leans with it.
    3. Step 3: Find the final point. Her "firmnes makes my circle just": a compass draws a perfect circle only if the center leg holds steady. And the circle brings him back: he will "end, where I begunne."
    4. Step 4: Explain why the unlikely comparison works: a compass shows two parts that are separate yet joined, and the separation itself is what draws the perfect circle.

    Answer: Model paragraph: Donne's compass conceit turns a cold tool of geometry into a precise argument that separation cannot break the couple's bond. The lovers are "two" only the way "stiffe twin compasses are two," joined at the top though their legs spread apart. The beloved is "the fixt foot," which seems not to move but leans after the other leg as it travels, just as her thoughts will follow the traveling speaker. The final stanza completes the argument: her "firmnes makes my circle just, / And makes me end, where I begunne." A compass draws a true circle only if the center holds steady, so her constancy is what makes his journey complete and guarantees his return. The comparison is surprising, but by the end its logic is exact: distance is not the opposite of their love but part of the shape it draws.

Common mistakes

  • Treating each detail of an extended metaphor as a separate device. Show how they build one comparison.
  • Calling any metaphor a conceit. A conceit is extended and links strikingly unlike things.
  • Explaining the comparison without saying what argument it makes about the main subject.

On the exam

  • Questions about extended metaphors often ask what a later detail adds to an earlier comparison. Trace the comparison from its start.
  • In the poetry essay, following one extended metaphor through the poem can organize your whole line of reasoning.

Connected topics

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Check yourself

5 questions on 5.5 Extended metaphors. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Line 5
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Line 10
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Walt Whitman, “A Noiseless Patient Spider” (1868), from Leaves of Grass (1891–92 edition)

Question 1 of 5

The poem develops an extended comparison between

Question 2 of 5

The relationship between the poem's two stanzas is best described as

Question 3 of 5

The final line (“Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul”) ends the poem on a note of

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
Line 5
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Line 10
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
Line 15
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Line 20
Were toward eternity.

Emily Dickinson, “The Chariot” (“Because I could not stop for Death”), as printed in Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890)

Question 4 of 5

The carriage ride functions throughout the poem as an extended metaphor for

Question 5 of 5

The final stanza (lines 17–20) reveals that the speaker

0 of 5 answered