I'm noticing a growing trend in American writing style that I find particularly disturbing, indeed almost as disturbing as the gospel singers in the Odor-Eaters commercial I just saw a minute ago. (I'll save my views on TV for another time, don't worry.) What I want to talk about right now is metaphors. Yes, metaphors have unfortunately reared their ugly head far too often in today's writing. Like a bad penny, they turn up even in Dartmouth literature. Observe the following sample, taken from a recent article in The Dartmouth:
"Sink your teeth into this album, you'll find that you'll walk away happy."
Okay. Let's look at this. Does this not leave the impression of someone walking away with an album still stuck in his or her teeth? How does this make one happy? Or perhaps we assume that one has removed the album from one's teeth before walking away. Well, why is one walking away? Do you usually listen to an album - and then walk away? I would assume that one would listen to the album in one's dorm. If you're walking away from your dorm, where are you going? Shouldn't you have shut off your stereo? These are the questions that plague my sleep at night.
Student writing isn't the only type subject to the pitfalls of metaphors. Observe this gem, taken from a recent edition of "FAO Notes," the Financial Aid Office newsletter (the name has been changed to protect the innocent): "Rising from the ranks of an administrative assistant, Helga will spearhead the Pell program by tackling the CSS and EDE tape loads ..."
Just look at that spectacle! It should be a felony to have three or more metaphors in the same sentence. Ignore the grammatical dissonance caused by "ranks" and "assistant" for a moment, and try to get a mental picture of this woman's new job. You can't do it! The mind is clouded by conflicting images caused by these metaphors: you might visualize Helga battling her way through the "ranks" of vicious administrative assistants (not to be confused with secretaries), and claiming her victory over opponents by shoving a spear or other pointed weapon through a Pell program, and finally taking a running start and leaping on some CSS and EDE tape loads, whatever those are. The metaphors cause the position of Pell coordinator to sound like something barbaric. Perhaps the Financial Aid Office hides a brutal side that most of us never see.
The main problem with metaphors is that while you may be trying to shed light on one subject, you end up throwing it to the dogs, and pretty soon the reader must cut through literary red tape and wade through a veritable swamp of meaningless information, just to get the picture and cause their mental lightbulb to illumine. Not to beat a dead horse, but overuse of metaphors really gets my goat. Do you catch my drift? How else can you have references to both a horse and goat in the same sentence and not be talking about northern New Hampshire's sexual practices?
I don't mean to imply that Dartmouth writing is the only cesspool from which extensive metaphors multiply like rabbits. There is a pastor back home who used to scare the Hell out of me when her sermons and prayers rambled on so long as to become nonsensical: "... and so, we have to open our hearts to God, who holds his hands out for us so that we may fall at his feet and redeem ourselves, and as we walk the path he's laid for us, we have to be careful not to drink the poison of deception, not to mention shutting ourselves off and building a wall, for God doesn't like walls, and we should build a bridge from our hearts, because although God doesn't like walls, he does like bridges, and we'll taste the sound of his blessing."
Sadly, even this writer himself has been prone to overusing metaphors. Here is an excerpt from an earlier column, "Eating at Dartmouth": "Wherever you may hail from, getting used to the college way of food ... is probably a trying exercise."
References to hailing, exercise, the "college way" - all in the same sentence! Sloppy. Very sloppy. Or how about this one, taken from a column called "Airing my Concerns": "... when I realized that I had piles and piles of dirty clothes as high as an elephant's eye (a grown-up elephant)."
Even with the clarifying parenthetical comment, this metaphor cannot be disguised as anything other than what it is: a miserable, low-down cliche. My advice? Avoid metaphors at all costs, or risk becoming a hack writer like me.
