Metaphors from Student Essays
Or
How NOT to Write Metaphorically
 
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. 
****** 
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. 
***** 
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again. 
***** 
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. 
***** 
McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. 
***** 
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze. 
***** 
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. 
***** 
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. 
***** 
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. 
***** 
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. 
***** 
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph. 
***** 
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can. 
***** 
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. 
***** 
The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play. 
***** 
The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon. 
***** 
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River. 
***** 
Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut. 
***** 
The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of "Jeopardy!" 
***** 
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. 
***** 
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. 
***** 
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. 
***** 
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something. 
***** 
Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter." 
***** 
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. 
***** 
It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before. 
***** 
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. 
***** 
The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium. 
***** 
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. 
***** 
Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser. 
***** 
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. 
***** 
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. 
***** 
Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first- generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened. 
***** 

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

 

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