Last room a word carried a verdict. Here a word carries a whole other world. When someone calls a city a machine, they have asked you to import a set of properties — efficiency, parts, no feelings — and to leave the rest of the machine behind. Nobody votes on which properties come over; the figure decides silently, and that silent decision is where the argument lives. So this room teaches the eight figures you will be asked to name, and one method that works on all of them: name the two things, say what is carried across, then say what is quietly NOT carried across. Five tabs — cards for the figures and the method, hints with a naming table, a quiz that makes you say what a metaphor imported, and a workshop where you sort figures, take one apart in order, label an extended metaphor and say what a comparison smuggled in.
“The city is a machine.” Two things that are not the same. Before asking what it means, ask what a machine actually is.
Every figure is a transfer: it takes two things that are not the same, carries some properties across and silently refuses to carry the rest. Naming the figure is the easy half. Say what crossed, say what did not, and propose the rival comparison — because what a figure refuses to carry is where the unexamined assumption is sitting.
What people get wrong
⚠️People often think…
I named it — it is a metaphor. That is the answer.
Naming it scores almost nothing, because the question is nearly always about effect. What did the comparison make you accept that a plain sentence would have had to argue for? “The city is a machine” is a metaphor, yes — and it has just asserted that residents have no interior life worth consulting, with no sentence you can contradict.
Every figure question is an argument question wearing a costume.
⚠️People often think…
Dead metaphors do not matter — nobody even hears them any more.
That is exactly what makes them the dangerous ones. A live metaphor announces itself and you can weigh it. A dead one has sunk into ordinary vocabulary, so it works with no resistance at all. A war on drugs stopped sounding like a comparison decades ago, and it still imports an enemy, a territory and a victory condition into a problem that has none of them.
The figures worth catching are the ones that stopped sounding like figures.
⚠️People often think…
The object is described a lot, so it must be a symbol.
Described often is not the same as meaningful. A thing becomes a symbol when it starts carrying weight the plot does not need — it keeps appearing at the moments that matter and means more each time. The test is to delete it: if nothing else in the book stops working, it was scenery.
Delete the object. What else stops working? That is its real weight.
Two things, what crossed, what did not
1Watch one
Take apart: “Her argument was a locked door.”
Name the two things: her argument, and a locked door. A metaphor — no like or as, so the claim is made flat.
What crossed: you cannot get through it, trying is pointless, and it was deliberately made that way.
What did NOT cross: a locked door has a key, and somebody holds it. The figure declines to ask whether her argument has one.
Rival comparison: “her argument was a wall” would drop the key entirely — no way through and never was one. Choosing door over wall left a door open, just barely.
2Do one with me
Name each figure.
“The city runs like a machine” uses like, so it is a
“The wind argued with the shutters” gives a thing human life, so it is
“He met his Waterloo” borrows another story, so it is an
💬One sentence, then you move on
Why is a metaphor a stronger claim than the same idea written plainly?
3Try one
The argument usually hides in what a figure did ____ carry across. One word.
I want a hint first
They are the ones that never made the crossing.
💬Last one — then you're done here
“If illness is a battle, the patient who dies has lost.” What does that show about figures?
Where this goes
Where this lives
The economy overheats, a firewall protects, the immune system fights, a country tightens its belt. Every one of those imports a story, and each story rules some solutions in and others out before anyone has argued for them.
What this feeds
Next room: all these small charges added up. Tone is what a writer sounds like when a hundred of these choices point the same way.
Find one metaphor today and name one true thing about the borrowed object that did not cross.
One card at a time — tap “Show me” to check yourself, then Next. Start at Foundation; when those feel easy, climb.
Helpful Hints
⚡ The one idea
Every figure is a transfer. It takes two things that are not the same, carries some properties from one to the other, and silently refuses to carry the rest. “The city is a machine” brings over efficiency, moving parts and indifference — and leaves behind rust, an off switch and an owner. Naming the figure is the easy half of the question. Saying what crossed and what did not is the half that is actually being marked.
📐 Naming the eight
Figure
What it does
Example
Metaphor
says one thing IS another
The city is a machine.
Simile
says one thing is LIKE another
The city runs like a machine.
Personification
gives a thing human life
The city never sleeps.
Hyperbole
overstates on purpose
I have said this a million times.
Understatement
understates on purpose
The fire was a bit inconvenient.
Idiom
a fixed phrase you cannot take apart
She let the cat out of the bag.
Symbol
a real thing standing for an idea
The locked gate, all through the novel.
Allusion
borrows another story’s weight
He met his Waterloo.
🪜 Taking any figure apart
1 · Name the two things. What is being compared to what?
2 · Say what is carried across. Which properties came over?
3 · Say what is NOT carried across. That is where the argument hides.
4 · Ask what a different comparison would have claimed instead.
💀 Dead, extended, mixed
A dead metaphor has been used so often that nobody sees the picture any more — the leg of a table, the heart of the city. An extended metaphor keeps one comparison running for a paragraph or a whole book. A mixed metaphor puts two pictures together that cannot both be true at once — “we will bite that bridge when we come to it” — and the failure is a useful test: if you cannot draw it, the writer was not seeing it either.
🎯 How you will be asked
“Which literary device is used in line 8?”
“What is the effect of comparing the city to a machine?”
“The author uses personification chiefly to…”
“What does the gate come to represent?”
“How does the extended metaphor develop across the passage?”
✅ Before the test, can you…
Name all eight figures without the table?
Say what a metaphor carried across AND what it refused to carry?
Tell a symbol from a thing that is simply described often?
Spot a mixed metaphor by trying to draw it?
Propose a different comparison and say what it would have claimed?
Pick your level
Look back at anything you missed — the hint that appeared is exactly what to reread tonight.
How sure did you feel?
Workshop
Work like a reader who can see the transfer: sort twelve figures by name, take one apart in order, label a metaphor's crossings and refusals, then say what a comparison argued without arguing.
Your practice never leaves this device. There is no account and no sign-in. Your work is saved in this browser only, and you can erase it whenever you want.
Your practice record — saved on this device
This is your record of the module on screen — it stays here and goes nowhere. Independent means you got it right on the first tap; supported means you got it after the explain-and-retry, or marked ‘I had it’ on a revealed answer. Both count, and neither is a grade. If your teacher asks, copy the row or show them this screen.
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Supported
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Hints used
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Lab
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Traps met
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Explained in own words
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The answer key is for a teacher: it prints only from here, for the unit on screen. Print the study packet prints the study pages and a blank quiz — never the answers.