A m y’ by Elisa Oh
s Metaphor
art by Tatjana Mai-Wyss
Amy Kim
Monday, September 25, 2006
Mrs. Twiss
Grade 6
Assignment: 1. What is a metaphor?
2. Create a metaphor for yourself and
explain why you chose it.
1. A metaphor is a comparison. A metaphor says one
thing is another thing. It compares two things that seem
very different at first. Here’s an example: The moon is
a lost coin. The moon and a coin don’t really seem alike
at all. But if you think about it, the metaphor shows you
something new about the moon. When the moon is full,
it looks like a bright, silver coin. The craters on the moon
resemble a person’s face from here on Earth, and coins
have people’s faces on them, too. Sometimes when you look
for the moon on a cloudy night, you can’t find it, like a lost
coin. Other times you see it suddenly without expecting to,
like finding someone else’s coin, lonely but lucky, on the
blacktop.
HI! I’M CRICKET. LET’S SEE
WHAT WE CAN LEARN
FROM AMY’S ASSIGNMENT.
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2. Dear Mrs. Twiss,
I’m having a hard time with this part of the assignment.
I’m not sure I can do it. I just can’t think of a metaphor
that sums up who I am. I’ll try to explain why.
Last Thursday, Mr. Jansen had our class in the
gym, and we learned about the world’s population by
stacking “10 million people” blocks on a giant map on
the floor. After we put the blocks away, there were still
a few minutes left before the bell. As Mr. Jansen flipped
through his almanac, he suddenly got a new idea. “O.K.,
everybody,” he said, “let’s find out what world-population
centers our class came from! I want each one of you to go
stand on the continent or country from which your family
originated.”
I had to go stand on North Korea, which made me
mad. It wasn’t fair or true to say that my whole family
came from Korea, even though I look Asian on the outside,
except my nose. My mom’s family is German as far back
as they go. That’s part of me, too. When Mr. Jansen
asked Twana to stand on West Africa, she said, “But my
ancestors are African and European.” From Ireland, Sean
shouted, “My uncle married a woman from Hawaii—
does that count?” He just wanted to stand in the Pacific
because that was closest to the door and the bell was about
to ring. Somewhere around Switzerland, Tim called out,
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“My grandmother is from the
Cherokee Nation—can I go to
North America?” Mr. Jansen’s cheeks
turned red. Luckily for him, the bell
rang then.
I left feeling mixed up
and unhappy. I feel that way
quite often when people
misunderstand who I am, and
there isn’t a good metaphor to
explain it. For example,
I got angry when a woman in
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the grocery store asked me where I was from, and I said,
“Right here in Greenfield.”
“No, where are you from from, originally?” she asked.
“Right here in Greenfield. Since I was born,” I told her.
“Are you sure? Because you look just like a Japanese girl
I knew once,” she said. I said I was sure and then I had
to explain the whole Korean-German thing to her, even
though she was a total stranger. It’s not fair that people
I don’t know can ask me questions about my race and
heritage, but it’s not polite for me to ask them, “So why do
your ears stick out like jug handles?”
Both sides of my family love me a lot, and we all
get along. But I am not the same as either group of
my relatives. My German cousins don’t know about
playing yut or making special dumplings for the lunar
new year, but I do. And my Korean cousins don’t know
about singing “O Tannenbaum” and “Stille Nacht” at
Christmastime, but I do. I go through life with two worlds
in me, and no one in my family—not even Mom and
Dad—knows what that’s like.
So anyway, I can’t think of a metaphor for me. Mutt,
half-breed ... the names rattle around in my head like a
handful of broken glass. Mom suggested a fairy princess,
because she said I have magic to cross in and out of
fairyland, and Dad suggested a mermaid, who can live on
YUT IS A KOREAN
BOARD GAME. IT
RHYMES WITH FOOT.
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land and in the sea. But I am real, and
fantasy creatures couldn’t survive in
the real world. I’m not an imaginary
monster like a griffin.
I also made up another metaphor
for myself called a circangle, which has
a triangle for a mother and a circle for
a father. It looks like this:
The circangle’s too
pointy to be a circle
and too roundy to be a
triangle. I’m sure
all the other shapes
would treat it like a
freak.
You can see that
I have tried to do
the assignment but
can’t finish it.
Amy
A GRIFFIN IS A
MYTHICAL CREATURE
THAT IS HALF EAGLE,
AND HALF LION.
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Don’t give up! I know you can do this assignment. I
Dear Amy,
think you need to start by changing the way you look at
yourself and your metaphor. You have already come up
with many things that are half one thing and half another
thing. However, all your examples are negative.
I want you to brainstorm a list of things that are good
combinations of two parts. There are lots of things that
are better when they’re combined with something else.
Here, I’ll start your list: peanut butter and jelly are better
together than they are apart, and in my opinion, so are
root beer and vanilla ice cream. Think about our science
lesson where we learned about all those exciting varieties
of hybrid roses. What about mixing blue and yellow paint
together to get green? Green is my favorite color.
If you keep going with this list, I think you can finish
the assignment by Friday. If you’re still stuck, come and
talk to me before then.
Mrs. Twiss
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Amy Kim
Friday, September 29, 2006
Mrs. Twiss
Grade 6
2. I am a musical duet. A duet has two different lines of
music for voices or instruments. At my cousin Jason’s
violin recital, he and a friend played a duet called Concerto
for Two Violins by Johann Sebastian Bach. Each of the two
violin parts could have been played alone, but together
they became something new and better. The two parts
took turns chasing each other, going back and forth, and
then making interesting patterns with both high and low
notes at the same time.
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Because my family comes from two different races and
cultures, I feel I have two musical parts playing in me
that create a new piece of music. When I told this to my
piano teacher yesterday, she showed me the definition of
“counterpoint” in her music dictionary. She let me copy
it for this assignment. “Counterpoint: The technique of
combining two or more independent melodies to make
up a harmonious texture.” This is a perfect metaphor for
me, because the two parts of me—Korean and German—
could each be an independent melody, but when they play
together in me, they make a happy, complicated harmony.
Not everyone understands what makes the music so
beautiful, but I can help them learn.
In "Amy's Metaphor", what descriptive language does Amy use to explain why the moon is a lost coin?
*
In the passage from "Amy's Metaphor," Amy uses several descriptive phrases to explain why she thinks the moon is like a lost coin:
1. **"The moon is full, it looks like a bright, silver coin."** – This phrase uses visual imagery to compare the round, luminous appearance of the full moon to the shiny and circular shape of a coin.
2. **"The craters on the moon resemble a person’s face from here on Earth, and coins have people’s faces on them, too."** – Amy uses similarity in appearance to draw a parallel between the human profiles often depicted on coins and the perceived "man in the moon," which some people claim to see when they look at the moon's surface and its craters.
3. **"Sometimes when you look for the moon on a cloudy night, you can’t find it, like a lost coin."** – She conjures the experience of searching for something elusive or hidden, emphasizing the frustration and difficulty in finding a small, lost object, which mirrors the challenge of spotting the moon on a night with poor visibility.
4. **"Other times you see it suddenly without expecting to, like finding someone else’s coin, lonely but lucky, on the blacktop."** – This part of the metaphor describes a serendipitous discovery, as one might unexpectedly come across a coin on the ground. The descriptive terms "lonely but lucky" convey a sense of isolation paired with the good fortune of finding something valuable.
Through these descriptions, Amy effectively conveys new perspectives on the moon by drawing comparisons to a lost coin, using visual imagery and experiences to make her metaphor vivid and engaging.