Simile, metaphor, personification

Simile (imaginative comparison). The intensification of some features of the concept in question is realized in a device called simile. Simile must not be confused with ordinary comparison. They represent two diverse processes. Comparison means weighing two objects belonging to one class of things with the purpose of establishing the degree of their sameness or difference. To use simile is to characterize one object by bringing it into contact with another object belonging to an entirely different class of things. Comparison takes into consideration all the properties of the two objects, stressing the one that is compared. Simile excludes all the properties of the two objects except one which is made common to them. E. g. 'The boy seems to be as clever as his mother.
It is ordinary comparison. 'Boy' and 'Mother' belong to the same class of “objects“- human beings - and only one quality is being stressed to find the resemblance.
E.g. 'Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,' It is simile.

Similes have formal elements in their structure: connective words such as like, as, such as, as if, as though, than; verbs: to resemble, to remind one of, to seem; verbal phrases to bear the resemblance, to have a look of, adverbial phrases like with the air of, with the grace of, with the caution of.

Metaphor. The term 'metaphor', as the etymology of the word reveals, means transference of some quality from one object to another. A metaphor becomes a stylistic device when two different phenomena (things, events, ideas, actions) are simultaneously brought to mind by the imposition of some or all of the inherent properties of one object on the other which by nature is deprived of these properties. "Dear Nature is the kindest Mother still" (Byron).

Metaphor can be presented by all notional parts of speech – nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs: England has two eyes, Oxford and Cambridge (n), friendly trees (adj), The night whispered to him (v), They entered the room slender (adv).

The SD of metaphor can be classified semantically and structurally. Semantically metaphors can be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness. Metaphors which are absolutely unexpected, i.e. are quite unpredictable, are called genuine metaphors: ‘There had been rain in the night, and now all the trees were curtseying to a fresh wind…’ Those which are -commonly used in speech and therefore are sometimes even fixed in dictionaries as expressive means of language are trite metaphors (hashed), or dead metaphors: a ray of hope, a maze of paths (лабиринт), flood of tears, a shadow of a smile, etc. Structurally metaphors can be simple and sustained. The simple metaphor is realized in one word and creating one image.

Sustained metaphor is realized in a number of logically connected words and creating a series of images supporting the central one: “This has always been a battlefield, but I’m pretty certain that if I hadn’t been here, everything would have been over between these two long ago. I’ve been a no-man’s land between them.” (J. Osborne)

Fresh metaphors are mostly to be found in emotive prose, while trite metaphors are used as EMs in newspaper articles, in oratory, even in scientific language. Personification is a kind of metaphor in which human qualities are ascribed to inanimate things. The non-human objects are portrayed in such a way that we feel they have the ability to act like human beings. For example, when we say, “The sky weeps” we are giving the sky the ability to cry, which is a human quality. Thus, we can say that the sky has been personified in the given sentence.

“Dexter watched from the veranda of the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the little wind, silver molasses under the harvest moon. Then the moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear pool, pale and quiet.” (O’Connor).

The chief function of metaphor is to create images. They will reveal the writer’s view indirectly and thus give the reader the pleasure of decoding the message hidden in the metaphor.