,Figures of Speech,Analogy,Analogy is also a form of comparison, but unlike simile or metaphor, which usually concentrates on one point of resemblance, analogy draws a parallel between two unlike things that have several common qualities or points of resemblance. The function of analogy differs also from that of simile or metaphor. While the latter figures serve to heighten effect with vivid imagery, analogy is chiefly used for the purpose of persuasion or for the explanation or exposition of an idea.,The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The players on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmatedwithout haste, but without remorse.T. H. Huxely,Man vs Nature-who will win? Huxley uses the analogy of two players in a chess game to explain that Man will succeed only if he plays by the laws of Nature.,Take an aerial photograph of Manhattan and reduce it three million times. You now have something that resembles the circuit of 6000-plus transistors that must be imprinted on a silicon wafer one-seventh of an inch square. Cover each transistor with a layer of insulation and connect them all with a thin path of aluminum. If there is a single defect, equivalent in scale to a one-foot pothole in the streets of Manhattan, the whole chip will be useless. (Time, 2.11. 81),In this analogy, the complexity and precision needed in making microprocessors is explained.),Paradox,A paradox is a figure of speech consisting of a statement or proposition which on the face of it seems self-contradictory, absurd or contrary to established fact or practice, but which on further thinking and study may prove to be true, well-founded, and even to contain a succinct point.,In Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet, finding out who Romeo is, expresses her feelings in this way: Nurse: His name is Romeo, and a Montague,The only son of your great enemy.Juliet: My only love sprung from my only hateToo early seen unknown, and known too late. Prodigious birth of love it is to me,That I must love a loathed enemy.,Those who are unfamiliar with the play would think the statement “My only love sprung from my only hate” rather strange, for how could one love what one hates? But knowing the story they would find the paradox is used most effectively to express Juliets mixed feelings at the enormity of her act: that she has fallen in love with the son of the family she has been brought up to hate.,In Wordsworths poem on the rainbow:My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began,So is it now I am a man,So be it when I shall grow oldOr let me die!The Child is father of the ManAnd I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.,Again, at the first reading, one is struck by the absurdity of the statement: The Child is father of the Man. How is that possible? On deeper study of the poem, however, one can deduce that Wordsworth meant that ones spiritual love of things natural begins from infancy and develops through manhood to death. It is a rounded process: “bound each to each by natural piety.” This profound thought could not have been better expressed than by paradox.,There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first. (John Updike: Rabbit, Run)The writer implies in this statement that there is a paradoxical quality in life, that sometimes what one does right may seem at first, to most people, wrong and unconventional, when it is really the correct thing to do.,This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. (Oscar Wilde)We usually dont wish something terrible to last, but Wilde is implying here that he really enjoys the suspense, and hopes it will last.,Sarcasm,Sarcasm is a bitter form of irony. It attacks in a taunting and bitter manner, and its aim is to disparage, ridicule and wound the feelings of the subject attacked.,From Jonathan Swifts “A MODEST PROPOSAL for preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public”: “ I do humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed whereof only one fourth part may be reserved for males, Which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine That the remaining hundred thousand may at a year old be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table,