Communicating with Metaphors, page 12

Allegory, continued

Since parables are preaching, they are often used when an author wants to convey a moral. For example, here’s the story of Grushenka and the onion (I think you should picture a scallion, or green onion) from Doestoveky’s The Brothers Karamazov in a parable about selfishness, greed, and sharing:

Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.

Take a look at the Stretch Your Brain excercises related to allegory.

Hyperbole

A hyperbole is an exaggeration used for emphasis or for comic effect. Hyperboles are not meant to be taken literally.

You might think that hyperboles would be most at home on comic fiction, but they can also be used to good effect in technical writing. Consider the following masterful and hilarious hyperbole from Deke McClelland’s introduction to “The Wonders of Blend Modes” in Photoshop 7 Bible :

When recording artist Paul Simon first asserted that there must be 50 ways to leave your lover, I couldn’t help but thinking he was inflating the number a little. I mean, some of the methods he proposed were pretty flimsy. Does it really help Gus to get on a bus?... Between Jack, Stan, Roy, Gus, and Lee, Simon gets around to delivering a scant five ways to leave your lover, just 10 percent of the number promised.

...

Don’t get me wrong, I love the song. But I think the songwriter might have had an easier time of it if he had decided to list the many ways you can combine and compare differently colored pixels in Photoshop. Forget 50, there must be 50 thousand! Just give it a nudge, Smudge; flutter and sway, Wave; give layers the purge, Merge—Clone stamp yourself free.

...

Did I say 50 thousand? I meant 50 million!

Continued next page

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