AP English Literature and Composition

## Learning Outcomes

- Identify metaphors in poems, including direct, implied, and extended comparisons
- Distinguish literal meaning from figurative meaning before interpreting a poem
- Explain how a metaphor shapes speaker, tone, structure, and theme
- Tell the difference between metaphor, simile, symbol, personification, and apostrophe
- Analyse sustained metaphor in an AP-style paragraph rather than merely naming devices
- Avoid common errors such as paraphrase, device-listing, and confusing speaker with poet

## AP English Literature and Composition Syllabus

For the AP English Literature and Composition, you are expected to understand metaphor recognition and function in poetry, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that a **metaphor** is a direct comparison that does not use _like_ or _as_
- Identify the difference between **literal meaning** and **figurative meaning**
- Explain how a metaphor can reveal the speaker’s attitude, tone, or state of mind
- Understand how an **extended metaphor** can organize a poem across several lines or stanzas
- Explain the difference between metaphor and related devices such as simile, symbol, and personification
- Analyse why a poet chooses a specific comparison rather than just spotting the device
- Use textual evidence to connect figurative language to a defensible interpretation of the poem

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. What makes a metaphor different from a simile?
2. How can a metaphor affect tone as well as meaning?
3. What is the difference between a single metaphor and an extended metaphor?
4. Why is it not enough on AP Lit to identify a metaphor without explaining it?
5. How is a metaphor different from a symbol?

## Introduction

Metaphor is one of the most common features you will meet in AP Lit poetry, and one of the most mishandled. Many students can spot a comparison, underline it, and label it correctly. Far fewer can explain why that comparison matters. On the exam, that second step is the one that earns marks.

A strong poetry analysis does not stop at “this is a metaphor.” It asks what is being compared, which qualities are being transferred, how the comparison shapes the speaker’s view, and what that does to the poem’s larger meaning. In short, metaphor is not decoration. It is part of how poems think.

> **Key Term: metaphor**
> A direct comparison in which one thing is described as another, usually without using _like_ or _as_.

### Recognising metaphor: what is being compared and why it matters

The first task is simple but essential: identify the two parts of the comparison. If a poem says hope is “the thing with feathers,” it does not mean hope literally has wings. It compares **hope** to a **bird**. Once you see that, you can begin asking what a bird suggests: lightness, song, endurance, motion, perhaps fragility, perhaps freedom. That is where analysis starts.

> **Key Term: literal meaning**
> What is directly happening or being described on the surface of the poem.
>
> **Key Term: figurative meaning**
> The implied or suggested meaning created beyond the literal surface.

Students often rush past the literal level. That causes weak commentary. Start with the surface situation, then move outward. For example, if a poem describes a road, ask first whether there is literally a road in the poem’s scene. Then ask whether that road may also suggest something else, such as time, choice, aging, or death.

A useful method is this sequence:

- What is being described?
- What is it compared to?
- What qualities does that second thing carry?
- Why are those qualities useful in this poem?
- What do they reveal about the speaker or the poem’s theme?

Take the familiar statement “Time is a thief.” Literally, time is not a criminal. Figuratively, the comparison suggests stealth, loss, and lack of control. A thief takes things without permission and often without warning. So the metaphor turns time from a neutral measure into an active force that strips human life away. That shift matters because it makes the speaker’s attitude sharper and more anxious.

Now consider a more unsettling simile often discussed in poetry study: evening described “like a patient etherized upon a table.” The literal image is shocking because evening is usually linked with calm or beauty. The figurative comparison replaces beauty with paralysis, numbness, and unnatural stillness. The result is not just a strange image. It prepares the reader for a speaker whose mental life is uneasy, stalled, and alienated.

> **Test Tip:** On AP Lit, if you identify a metaphor, your next sentence should explain the qualities it transfers. Avoid “this shows” on its own. Write about what the comparison emphasizes, reveals, or complicates.

A metaphor can also be implied rather than fully stated. If a poem says someone “barked orders,” the line implies a comparison to a dog without naming it directly. That still counts as figurative language, and it still needs analysis. The question remains the same: why that comparison? Harshness? Aggression? Loss of civility?

The exam does not reward you for hunting devices at random. It rewards a defensible interpretation. If you find a metaphor, connect it to something larger: the speaker’s emotional state, a shift in tone, a tension in the poem, or a claim about human experience.

### Explaining function: how metaphor shapes tone, speaker, and theme

Once you have identified a metaphor, the central AP skill is explaining function. Function means purpose and effect in context. What does the metaphor do in this poem, at this moment, for this speaker?

> **Key Term: tone**
> The speaker’s attitude toward the subject, audience, or situation, conveyed through language and detail.

A metaphor can shape **tone** by changing the emotional register of the poem. Compare these two ways of describing the same thing:

- “Books take us places.”
- “There is no frigate like a book.”

The second is more than a fancy rewrite. By comparing a book to a frigate and later to a chariot, the speaker lifts reading into a world of adventure, motion, and grandeur. The metaphor gives reading dignity and excitement. Tone becomes admiring, even celebratory.

This is why the exact comparison matters. If the poet had chosen “wagon” instead of “frigate,” the effect would be flatter. A frigate suggests bold travel; a chariot suggests power and elevation. Good commentary notices not just that there is a metaphor, but why these particular words intensify meaning.

Metaphor also shapes our understanding of the **speaker**. If a speaker constantly compares life to battle, machines, or cages, that pattern reveals a cast of mind. The poem may never directly say “I feel trapped” or “I see life as conflict,” but the metaphors say it indirectly.

For example, Christina Rossetti’s “Uphill” develops a journey as a metaphor for approaching death. The speaker asks practical questions about the road, the night, the inn, and the travellers ahead. Literally, it sounds like travel advice. Figuratively, it turns death into a difficult but guided passage. This matters because the metaphor softens fear without removing difficulty. Death is uphill, tiring, and dark, but also shared, expected, and met with shelter. The tone is serious yet reassuring.

> **Key Term: speaker**
> The voice or persona in the poem; not automatically the poet.

That distinction matters. Students often say “the poet is sad” when the safer, more accurate claim is “the speaker presents death as…” In AP commentary, that precision helps your argument stay grounded in the text.

Metaphor can also develop **theme**, but theme should be stated as an idea, not a single word. Instead of saying “the theme is hope,” say something like “the poem suggests that hope persists even under pressure.” Metaphor often makes that fuller claim possible.

Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” is the thing with feathers— is a useful example. The bird image does not merely decorate the poem. It builds a claim about hope:

- hope sings
- hope endures storms
- hope asks little in return

The metaphor therefore gives hope motion, sound, persistence, and independence. A weak analysis would stop at “hope is compared to a bird.” A stronger one explains that the comparison presents hope as instinctive and resilient, something that survives harsh conditions without external reward.

> **Test Tip:** A good AP sentence frame is: “Literally, the poem describes **_; figuratively, it presents it as _**, suggesting **_. This reveals the speaker’s _** attitude and helps develop the idea that \_\_\_.”

One more point students miss: metaphors can create tension, not just clarity. A comparison may open several meanings at once. If a poem says the world is a stage, that can suggest performance, artificiality, fixed roles, public display, or temporary entrances and exits. You do not need to force one rigid interpretation if the poem supports more than one. AP essays often gain strength when they acknowledge that a metaphor broadens meaning rather than narrowing it.

### Distinctions students confuse: metaphor, simile, symbol, personification, and apostrophe

Many AP mistakes come from mixing up related terms. You do not need advanced theory terms to do well, but you do need clean distinctions.

> **Key Term: simile**
> A comparison using _like_ or _as_.

A **simile** states the comparison openly. A **metaphor** states or implies it more directly. “My love is like a red, red rose” is a simile. “Hope is the thing with feathers” is a metaphor. On AP Lit, both matter, but the same rule applies: naming the device is only the start.

> **Key Term: extended metaphor**
> A comparison that continues across several lines, stanzas, or an entire poem and is developed through added details or images.
>
> **Key Term: conceit**
> An elaborate or surprising extended metaphor in poetry.

An **extended metaphor** lasts. A single metaphor may appear once and disappear. An extended one organizes multiple details. Rossetti’s journey in “Uphill” is extended because the poem keeps building the same comparison through road, night, inn, door, labour, and beds. Dickinson’s bird image for hope is also sustained across the poem. A **conceit** is a more elaborate kind of sustained comparison, often surprising or intellectually demanding.

A **symbol** is different.

> **Key Term: symbol**
> A concrete object, image, person, setting, or action that represents additional meaning beyond its literal role.

A metaphor compares one thing to another. A symbol points beyond itself. A bird in a poem may be a symbol of freedom, mortality, or spiritual release depending on context. But if the poem says hope _is_ a thing with feathers, that is metaphor. Sometimes the same image can work in both ways, but do not force the terms to mean the same thing. Ask whether the poem is making a comparison or building representative meaning through recurrence and context.

Personification and apostrophe are also often confused.

> **Key Term: personification**
> Giving human traits, feelings, or actions to something nonhuman or abstract.
>
> **Key Term: apostrophe**
> Direct address to an absent person, dead person, abstract idea, object, or nonhuman thing as if it could respond.

If a poem says the sun “peered” over the hill, that is **personification** because the sun is given a human action. If a speaker cries, “O Death, where is thy sting?” that is **apostrophe** because the speaker directly addresses an abstract force.

Personification is often a type of metaphor because it transfers human qualities to something nonhuman. But not every metaphor is personification. “Time is a thief” personifies time by giving it human criminal agency. “Life is a journey” does not personify life; it compares life to a route.

These distinctions matter most when the exam gives you answer choices or when you are choosing evidence. If you call everything a symbol or everything a metaphor, your analysis loses precision.

### Tracking extended metaphor and writing AP-style commentary

Extended metaphor becomes especially powerful when it works with structure. A sustained comparison can guide stanza movement, signal shifts, and shape the poem’s argument from start to finish.

In a poem built around one controlling comparison, ask:

- Does the metaphor begin immediately or emerge later?
- Does it deepen across stanzas?
- Does the tone change while the metaphor remains?
- Does the ending confirm or complicate the comparison?

For instance, in a poem where reading is compared to travel, the early lines may stress movement and delight, while later lines add economy, access, or spiritual growth. The same comparison widens as the poem proceeds. That development is structural, not just decorative.

Students often miss how structure and metaphor cooperate. If a poem opens with one image and closes by revising it, that shift is worth analysing. Shakespeare’s sonnet beginning “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” is useful here. The poem rejects stale love comparisons one by one. The closing couplet then changes direction and asserts real affection “without false compare.” The function of those rejected metaphors is not praise but critique. Shakespeare uses bad comparisons to expose false poetic convention.

This is a reminder that you should not label an image a cliché unless you explain what the poem is doing with that familiarity. A poet may use worn comparisons on purpose to mock, resist, or revise them.

Here is a model AP-style analytical paragraph:

A poem that presents hope as “the thing with feathers” uses an extended metaphor to make an abstract quality feel active and durable. Literally, hope cannot perch or sing, but the bird image transfers lightness, persistence, and natural song to the emotion. Because the bird continues to sing “in the Gale,” the comparison suggests that hope is strongest not when life is easy but when conditions are severe. The metaphor therefore does more than illustrate hope; it defines hope as a force that survives pressure without demanding reward, creating a tone that is both admiring and quietly assured.

Notice what this paragraph does:

- identifies the metaphor
- clarifies literal versus figurative meaning
- explains transferred qualities
- connects to tone and theme

That is the level of commentary AP readers want. Not “there is a metaphor.” Not plot summary. Not device list. A line of reasoning.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- A metaphor is a direct comparison that usually does not use _like_ or _as_
- Strong AP analysis separates literal meaning from figurative meaning before making claims
- The key question is not only what is compared, but why that comparison is chosen
- Metaphors can shape tone by changing the emotional quality of a poem
- Metaphors can reveal the speaker’s attitude, assumptions, or mental state
- Extended metaphors develop across multiple lines or stanzas rather than appearing once
- A conceit is an elaborate or surprising extended metaphor
- Symbol and metaphor are not the same: one represents, the other compares
- Personification gives human qualities to nonhuman things; apostrophe directly addresses them
- AP readers reward explanation of function, not just identification of devices
- A strong commentary chain is literal situation to figurative suggestion to effect on tone or theme
- Sustained metaphor often interacts with structure, especially shifts, repetition, and endings

## Key Terms and Concepts

- metaphor
- literal meaning
- figurative meaning
- tone
- speaker
- simile
- extended metaphor
- conceit
- symbol
- personification
- apostrophe


Poetry I - Metaphor recognition and function