Analogy and Related Devices


Choose a topic from items 1-15, or choose a subject from items 16-30 and add an appropriate image to it. Then develop your choice into an extended analogy. (See also the guidelines that follow.)
1. Music as a drug
2. Prejudice as a wall
3. Human metabolism as fire
4. A career as a mountain to climb
5. Life as a road
6. A library as a brain
7. The playing field as a battlefield
8. The human race as a family
9. Addiction as a crutch
10. A paragraph as an essay in miniature
11. A career as war
12. The beehive as a city
13. Reading as programming a computer
14. A career as marriage
15. Dancing as life
16. Crime as ________________
17. Wealth as ________________
18. A library as ________________
19. Dating as ________________
20. Old age as ________________
21. Our legal system as ________________
22. A doctor as ________________
23. A teacher as ________________
24. Religion as ________________
25. Divorce as ________________
26. Nuclear missiles as ________________
27. Health as ________________
28. School as ________________
29. A book as ________________
30. The planet Earth as ________________

Process in Writing: Guidelines
Follow at least some of these steps in writing your essay of analogy.

1. Choose a topic you really like, because motivation is the single greatest factor in good writing.

2. If you complete one of the topics from 16 to 30, be sure to invent an analogy (with two items from different categories), not a comparison and contrast (with two items from the same category). Know which item is your real subject, and which one exists merely to explain the other.

3. Now freewrite on your topic, to achieve the spontaneity and originality that spark a good analogy.

4. Incorporate the best of this freewriting into your first draft. Let the ideas flow, not stopping now to revise or edit.

5. In your next draft add any more points of comparison that come to you (a strong analogy is fully developed). Read your prose aloud to detect awkward passages, and revise. Trim deadwood. Heighten TRANSITIONS.

6. Now edit for things like spelling and grammar.

7. Write and proofread your good copy. Save the essay in case your teacher suggests further revision.