If you go online and look up “Bad Metaphors or Similes,” here are a few examples you’re likely to find:
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
What makes these so comically terrible? For one, they each violate the blueprint of a good joke: recognizable set up, a moment of tension, then a hard right turn. With the examples above, the turn, rather than being poetic or descriptive, is blunt and obvious- a U-Turn.
I realize that being a former English teacher makes me part of the home team so to speak, but it's difficult for me to imagine understanding anything complex or abstract without having a coinciding metaphor illustrating it. I would even go one step further and say that metaphors can become a part of our personal stories, and that like personal stories, they become our "compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice." Solnit, Rebecca (2013-06-13). The Faraway Nearby (p. 3). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.
