In writing, comparison is a useful tool to provide background information or add detail to an explanation by giving your audience more context. Using an analogy or a simile is a way to creatively insert a comparison into a description, but these literary devices are often mixed up by novice writers.
At a basic level, an analogy is a comparison, but the most common literary usage involves taking two different things and finding a quality they share in order to draw a comparison. For example, a writer might use the holidays over the course of a year as an analogy for the cycle of a person’s life, or someone giving a speech might use their dog’s sense of playfulness as an analogy for the importance of creativity and play in the workplace. Standardized tests in many United States schools use analogies for a familiar format: “Writer is to word as sculptor is to marble.” To correctly answer this question, the test taker would identify the comparison as being between the creator and the medium.
As a comparison tool, a simile is more specific in its format: Two seemingly unalike concepts are linked with the words “like” or “as.” The word “simile” comes from the Latin adjective similis, which means “similar in likeness.” In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the narrator Scout uses a simile to introduce her teacher, Miss Caroline: “She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop.” This comparison gives us an immediate picture of a young woman dressed in red and white with a minty perfume, and also suggests that she’s young, fresh, and energetic.
A metaphor is a very similar concept to a simile, but it relates two concepts directly, without the use of “like” or “as.” For example, in As You Like It, Shakespeare emphasizes the temporary nature of the world by calling it a stage play: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Similes and metaphors are specific types of expression, while analogies encompass the whole concept of the comparison. The use of analogy is like the pollen in spring — all around us. And similes are to writing as dabbing is to painting — a specific technique, well deployed by the artist.
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