Look closely at a Gloria Anzaldua’s use of metaphor as a rhetorical technique for exploring themes and making arguments.
Required sources & using quotes
The paper requires at least one quote with citation from Metaphoric Criticism by rhetorician Sonja Foss and/or from Metaphors to Live By by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson to inform your analysis of the major writer’s (Woolf, Walker, Anzalda, Orwell, and/or Baldwin) metaphoric choices.
You must also quote several times and in various places from How to Tame a Wild Tongue by G. Anzaldua. A good rule is to include at least one quote per body paragraph. Ensure you are balancing text and your own interpretative/ academic writer’s voice.
Metaphor interpretation
The goal of this paper is to make a critical argument about a metaphor that appears in a written document. Explain how a metaphor (Shakespeares sister, a mothers garden, a wild tongue, a hanging, a glass hitting a mirror, etc.) refers to an idea about familial, social, cultural, and/or political power dynamics. You can discuss how the metaphor is representational of a particular history and/or how it may signal a change in thinking, action, or belief.
For example, the mothers garden acts for Alice Walker as a metaphor for black womens courage and creativity. It offers an alternative history of womens ability and agency to create. Your interpretation of a metaphor and how a writer uses it to create an argument will constitute your thesis. There are many metaphors running through the assigned essays. Do not feel limited by my suggestions here.
Metaphor as an element of rhetoric
The metaphors you choose to analyze here may dovetail with those themes you spoke to in your rhetorical analysis. Be attentive to connections in the papers you are creating. If you find a theme that carries through your work, or your hit upon a particular subject of interest in your reading/writing, you may see a topic for a final research project.