4.2 Figurative Language & Tone

Figurative Language and Tone

Literary writers rarely say exactly what they mean in plain, literal words. They use figurative language — words and phrases that mean something beyond their literal definition — to build images, feelings, and layers of meaning. The GED RLA regularly asks you to identify a device (name it) and to interpret it (explain what it does). You must also judge tone and mood, which grow out of a writer's diction (word choice). This section covers the devices the GED tests most and how they create meaning.

The Core Devices

Simile vs. Metaphor — the #1 Confusion

Both compare, but the answer hinges on the cue words. Simile uses like or as; metaphor asserts identity without them.

• Simile: "Her voice was like velvet."
• Metaphor: "Her voice was velvet."

Worked example from a tested poem — Langston Hughes asks what happens to "a dream deferred": "Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?" Because the comparison uses the word like, this is a simile, not a metaphor. The image makes an abstract idea (a postponed dream) concrete and shriveled — you can see the loss.

By contrast, Frederick Douglass calls America the "grand illuminated temple of liberty." There is no like or as; he calls the nation a temple directly, so this is a metaphor. The device sharpens his point about the contradiction between America's ideals of freedom and the reality of slavery.

Symbolism and Imagery Work Together

Imagery appeals to the senses and builds mood; symbolism lets a concrete object carry an abstract meaning. In a tested memoir excerpt, a daughter describes coal miners who "came home from the mines looking like shadows." Literally, this is a simile (note the word "like"). But it also builds dark imagery — streets "black with dust" — and the shadow image symbolizes how the dangerous work drains and diminishes the men. A single phrase can be labeled as a device and analyzed for meaning; the GED tests both moves.

Tone vs. Mood

These two terms are constantly confused, and the GED exploits it.

A helpful memory aid: Tone comes from the auThor; Mood is Me, the reader. A passage can carry a calm tone yet leave the reader with an uneasy mood, and vice versa.

Diction: Word Choice Is Meaning

Diction is a writer's specific word choice, and it drives both tone and figurative effect. The key distinction is denotation versus connotation:

• Denotation — the literal dictionary meaning.
• Connotation — the emotional coloring a word carries.

Thrifty and cheap share a denotation (spending little) but carry opposite connotations — one admiring, one critical. When a GED question asks why an author chose a particular word, the answer usually lies in its connotation and the tone it creates, not in its dictionary definition.

How Figurative Language Creates Meaning

Naming a device earns nothing unless you can say what it accomplishes. Ask three questions:

1. What two things are connected? (A dream and a drying raisin.)
2. What quality transfers? (Withering, shrinking, the loss of life.)
3. What feeling or idea results? (The quiet tragedy of deferred hope.)

Apply the same three questions to personification: "the wind whispered through the empty house." (1) The wind is connected to a human speaker. (2) The transferred quality is quiet, secretive speech. (3) The result is an eerie, lonely mood — the empty house feels almost alive and watchful. That is how one verb, "whispered," does the work of an entire sentence of description.

Symbolism follows the same logic but at the level of the whole passage. When an object recurs and gains weight — a dying garden, a locked door, a fading photograph — ask what larger idea it stands for and whether the surrounding text supports that reading. A GED symbolism answer must still be grounded in details, not invented; if the passage gives no evidence that the locked door represents a character's guarded past, that reading is unsupported no matter how clever it sounds.

Common Traps

• Calling every comparison a metaphor. If you see like or as, it is a simile.
• Swapping tone and mood. Tone is the writer's attitude; mood is the reader's feeling.
• Reading hyperbole literally. "A million things to do" signals stress, not a real count.
• Ignoring connotation. Two words with the same denotation can set opposite tones.
• Forcing symbolism. Not every object is a symbol — assign symbolic meaning only when the text supports it.