Interpreting Figurative Language: AP English Literature Study Guide

CHAPTER 6 Interpreting Figurative Language

Figurative language should clarify relationships in the text. A metaphor transfers an association. An image pattern can build pressure across a passage. An object's symbolic force comes from the way the text uses it; a reference list cannot assign a universal meaning. An allusion becomes analytically useful when the surrounding passage activates it. The analytical work is to identify the feature accurately, explain the relationship it creates, and connect that relationship to character, perspective, structure, or meaning.

Meaning Through Comparison

A metaphor or simile is not complete once you have named the two things being compared. The useful step is identifying which specific quality is being transferred from one to the other, since most objects and images carry several possible associations and the passage will only be using one or two of them. A comparison to a storm could transfer suddenness, destructive force, or simply scale; the surrounding sentence, not the comparison alone, tells you which. State the transferred quality explicitly and connect it to what it reveals about the character, moment, or relationship it describes.

A character's anger is compared to a kettle left too long on the heat. The comparison could emphasize noise, danger, or the sense of pressure building toward an inevitable release. If the surrounding sentences describe the anger as having built slowly and silently for weeks, the relevant quality is the delay before eruption, not the noise. Naming the comparison as a metaphor without specifying which quality is active leaves the analysis unfinished.

Extended Figurative Comparison

Personification gives a nonhuman object, place, or idea a human action, attitude, or capacity. Identify what has been personified, then explain the human relationship the choice creates. A street that “watches” its residents can make setting feel socially judging; a door that “refuses” to open can turn physical resistance into conflict. The transferred human quality must be tied to the passage's perspective or meaning.

An extended metaphor develops a comparison across several lines or moments. A conceit is an extended comparison that is often surprising or intellectually elaborate. Do not assume every detail maps perfectly. Track which qualities continue, which change, and what the developing comparison allows the text to say.

Image Patterns and Symbolism

Notice a single striking image; track an image that returns in variation as a pattern, since a pattern accumulates meaning that no single instance carries alone. A symbol is not assigned meaning by a reference list of common associations. It gets its meaning from repeated or emphasized use within this text. An object becomes symbolic when the passage returns to it, associates it with a character's internal state, or places it at moments of heightened significance; absent that textual work, treating an object as symbolic risks importing meaning the passage never built.

A house is described once as drafty. Later, a character mentions that the front door never quite latches. Later still, someone pulls a blanket tighter despite the season. No single mention makes the house symbolic. Together, the pattern builds a house that cannot keep anything in or out, which becomes difficult to separate from the family struggling to hold itself together inside it.

A character or setting can take on symbolic function too when the text repeatedly attaches an idea, value, or emotional association to that person or place.

Allusion as Evidence

An allusion functions only when the surrounding passage activates the association it invites. Recognizing a reference is the first step, not the analysis itself. Ask what specific quality of the referenced figure, event, or work the passage is drawing on, and whether the passage uses that reference straightforwardly or ironically. An allusion to a mythic figure known for pride, used to describe a character who is repeatedly humbled, is likely doing ironic work, not functioning as a straightforward comparison, and the passage's surrounding tone will usually confirm which is intended.

A character who keeps returning to a task everyone else considers finished is described, in passing, as pushing his stone back up the hill. The reference only does analytical work if the passage has already established the task as endless or futile. If it has not, the allusion is decorative, not functional, and the analysis should say so directly. Do not assume the reference automatically deepens the reading.

Figurative-Language Practice

Two short passages follow, selected for a controlled central comparison and a returning image pattern, respectively.

From “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde (1890)

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward. As he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry, languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar.”

“I don't think I shall send it anywhere,” Basil answered, tossing his head back. “No, I won't send it anywhere.” Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away.”

“I know you will laugh at me,” Basil replied, “but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.” Lord Henry stretched his long legs out on the divan and shook with laughter. “Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you—well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.”

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

I met a Traveller from an antique land, / Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, / The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; / And on the pedestal, these words appear: / 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Identify the central comparison in the Wilde passage, name the specific quality it transfers, and connect that quality to the passage's larger portrayal of character or situation.

Micro-Drill 1: Use the Allusion as Evidence

In the Dorian Gray excerpt, explain the Adonis/Narcissus allusions without giving any myth summary longer than one clause. State what association each adds to Lord Henry’s description of Dorian.

Micro-Drill 2: Trace the Image Pattern

Track the image of ruin and vastness as it recurs across the Shelley sonnet. For each appearance, note what has changed in the surrounding lines, and explain what that change adds to the image’s cumulative meaning.

Micro-Drill 3: Return to the Earlier Personification

Return to the Araby phrase from Chapter 5 in which the houses “gazed at one another.” In one sentence, name the human action transferred to the houses. In a second, explain how that personification changes the street from physical setting into social pressure.

Multiple-Choice Practice

Question 1

Basil's first reaction to the portrait, smiling and then suddenly closing his eyes, chiefly creates

A. proof that he dislikes the technical quality of the painting.
B. a comic contrast between Basil and Lord Henry's indifference.
C. a tension between artistic pride and an impulse to withdraw from what the portrait exposes.
D. evidence that the portrait has physically changed before Lord Henry sees it.

Question 2

Lord Henry's insistence that Basil exhibit the portrait primarily serves to

A. place public reputation against Basil's desire to keep the work private.
B. prove that Lord Henry owns the painting.
C. show that Basil has never exhibited any work before.
D. shift the passage away from art toward financial need.

Question 3

Basil's statement that he has ‘put too much of myself into it’ is best understood as

A. a literal claim that the portrait resembles Basil physically.
B. a figurative confession that the work reveals private feeling or investment he does not want made public.
C. a technical complaint that the painting shows his brushwork too clearly.
D. an admission that he used himself as the model.

Question 4

Lord Henry's comparison of Dorian to ‘Adonis’ and ‘Narcissus’ primarily functions to

A. establish Dorian's knowledge of classical mythology.
B. criticize Basil for painting historical subjects.
C. prove that Dorian consciously models himself on those figures.
D. translate Dorian's beauty into mythic terms while also introducing associations with self-regard and aesthetic idealization.

Question 5

The contrast Lord Henry draws between ‘beauty’ and ‘intellectual expression’ chiefly reveals

A. a factual distinction the other characters accept without question.
B. the narrator's endorsement of a scientific theory of facial appearance.
C. Basil's belief that intelligence always destroys art.
D. his tendency to turn aesthetic preference into provocative, absolute-sounding judgments.

Question 6

Taken together, the portrait and the conversation around it most strongly establish art as

A. a neutral object whose value depends only on technical skill.
B. a site where beauty, private feeling, and public reputation become entangled.
C. a distraction from the characters' real concerns.
D. evidence that Basil and Lord Henry share the same values.

Question 7

In ‘Ozymandias,’ the nested structure in which the speaker reports a traveler's report primarily

A. places the ruined statue at a slight narrative distance, reinforcing how far its former power has receded.
B. proves the traveler is unreliable about the statue's appearance.
C. allows Ozymandias to speak directly to the poem's speaker.
D. turns the poem into a dramatic dialogue between two equal characters.

Question 8

The phrase ‘sneer of cold command’ chiefly suggests that the sculptor has preserved

A. the king's fear of losing political authority.
B. an attitude of detached dominance that survives even after the political power itself has vanished.
C. the statue's physical exposure to desert weather.
D. the traveler's contempt for the sculptor.

Question 9

The statement that the sculptor ‘well those passions read’ most directly implies that

A. the ruler personally taught the sculptor how to carve his face.
B. the inscription on the pedestal explains the statue's expression.
C. the artist's perception has outlasted the ruler's authority by preserving the character of his power.
D. the traveler believes art is more politically powerful than every government.

Question 10

The command ‘Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ becomes ironic chiefly because

A. the surrounding emptiness makes the boast testify to the disappearance of the very works it celebrates.
B. the inscription is written in a language the traveler cannot read.
C. the statue has been moved away from its original location.
D. the speaker admires Ozymandias more than the traveler does.

Question 11

The final description of ‘boundless and bare’ sands chiefly functions to

A. suggest that the desert itself is Ozymandias's greatest surviving work.
B. explain why the statue was difficult for the traveler to find.
C. expand the scale of emptiness around the ruin, making the king's former claim to magnitude seem small.
D. indicate that a new empire will soon occupy the region.

Question 12

The poem's central comparison is ultimately between

A. two different rulers competing for the same territory.
B. the traveler's knowledge and the speaker's ignorance.
C. the beauty of the statue and the ugliness of the desert.
D. the durability of artistic representation and the fragility of political power.

Answer Key and Rationales

Show the answers and explanations

1. C. Basil first enjoys the work, then reacts as if the image has revealed something too intimate. A is contradicted by Lord Henry calling it his best work and by Basil's pleasure.

2. A. Lord Henry treats exhibition as the obvious route to reputation, while Basil refuses because the painting is personally revealing. D is not supported; money is not the issue.

3. B. Lord Henry immediately misreads the line as physical resemblance, which the rest of the exchange corrects. A is therefore the tempting but explicitly rejected interpretation.

4. D. The allusions intensify beauty and suggest a culture of aesthetic worship. C is too strong because Dorian is not present to make such a self-comparison.

5. D. Lord Henry speaks epigrammatically, converting taste into categorical principle. A misses the provocative function of his rhetoric.

6. B. The painting links Basil's secrecy, Lord Henry's public ambitions, and Dorian's idealized beauty. D is contradicted by their disagreement over exhibition and meaning.

7. A. The mediated report places the king and his monument at several removes from the present speaker, which reinforces historical distance. B confuses mediation with evidence of unreliability.

8. B. The facial expression persists on the ruined stone while the empire is gone. A is possible psychologically but not stated; the poem emphasizes command, not fear.

9. C. The sculptor's reading of Ozymandias survives in the ruined face after the political authority itself has vanished. D overgeneralizes the poem into a claim about every government.

10. A. The boast survives beside 'Nothing beside remains,' so the intended intimidation reverses into evidence of impermanence. C is possible historically but absent from the poem.

11. C. The vast empty landscape dwarfs the monument and its boast. A is tempting because the desert dominates the scene, but the poem does not credit the king with creating it.

12. D. The sculptor's reading and the inscription survive as fragments while the empire disappears. C misses the poem's concern with time, representation, and power.

Micro-Drill Answer Guidance

Micro-Drill 1: Use the Allusion as Evidence. Adonis intensifies idealized physical beauty; Narcissus adds self-regard and beauty turned into an object of fascination. The answer should connect those associations to Lord Henry's aesthetic values, not retell the myths.

Micro-Drill 2: Trace the Image Pattern. ‘Vast’ first attaches magnitude to the statue. ‘Colossal Wreck’ preserves scale after destruction. ‘Boundless and bare’ then gives the greater scale to the desert itself. The pattern reverses the king's claim: magnitude remains, but it belongs to emptiness and time, not to his empire.

Micro-Drill 3: Return to the Earlier Personification. The houses receive the human action of gazing. That makes the street feel watchful and socially observant, reinforcing enclosure and the boy's private, hidden desire.