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Figurative Analogies - Without Them There'd be No Comparison
Using Figurative Analogies for Emotional Impact

Figurative analogies compare items from different classes. They clarify complex concepts by comparing them to something well known. In persuasive speeches, figurative analogies argue we should believe something in a new instance because we already hold the belief in a similar instance. Since the objects being compared are inherently different, figurative analogies are a weaker form of evidence than literal analogies. However, figurative analogies are vivid, and comparisons make teaching easier. You can create figurative analogies and make your speech emotionally appealing. For example:

• Winston Churchill compared the Soviet Union's post-World War II domination of Eastern Europe to "an iron curtain."
• President Carter's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., compared cigarette smoking to "slow-motion suicide" in a graphic figurative analogy.
• "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen," was President Harry S. Truman's philosophy about political pressure.
• In 1954, President Eisenhower explained his concerns about a Communist takeover of Southeast Asia, beginning with Vietnam and leading to Thailand and Pakistan, by comparing it to a series of dominoes. "You have a row of dominoes set up and you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you have a disintegration that would have the most profound influences." The "domino theory" was later used to justify American intervention in Vietnam.
• In his speech The Bullet or the Ballot, Malcolm X employed a figurative analogy comparing Black Americans to someone with an empty plate at a dinner. "I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on the plate."
• The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. used an elaborate figurative analogy in his I Have a Dream speech comparing discrimination to a familiar event. "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. Their note was a promise that all men-black men as well as white men-would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But it is obvious today that… America has given the Negro people a bad check-a check that has come back marked 'insufficient funds'".
• Figurative analogies are nothing new. The Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards used figurative analogies in his July 8, 1741, sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God to clarify and explain what he saw as the complex concept of God's wrath towards a sinful people. "The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose," and "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire…"
• In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt justified the Lend-Lease Act with what is arguably the most famous figurative analogy in American public speaking. As a neutral country, the U. S. could sell arms to any combatant. Roosevelt wanted to sell Britain arms, but the British didn't have the money to pay for them. The Lend-Lease Act "loaned" Britain destroyers, aircraft, tanks, etc. They would be returned when the British were done using them. Roosevelt simplified a complex diplomatic issue for the American people by comparing it to an event about which there was no argument. "Suppose my neighbor's house catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him put out the fire. Now what do I do? I don't say to him before that operation, 'Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it.' What is the transaction that goes on? I don't want $15-I want my garden hose back after the fire is over." Ultimately, the Lend-Lease act "lent" nearly fifty billion dollars worth of supplies to Britain, the Soviet Union and their allies.