Analogies in Papers: A Reflection on the Paper for Midterm 1

It's my last semester as an undergraduate English major, and through the years I think I've started to develop an idea of the connections between comments that professors give about papers. Everyone, of course, has their own vocabulary and way of describing what it is that they are looking for. In the end, though, they (professors) are often referring to the same or similar things.

In our last class period, Dr. Wickman and Dr. Burton talked about the weakness of analogies without analysis. Maybe you've had other teachers use the same vocabulary, but more likely they've said other things to push papers further: "Think of the implications of that claim" or "But why does it matter that you've pointed out this similarity?"In some ways, all of these comments are pushing us to get past our simple claims and complicate them.

I'll give a bad couple of sentences from my paper:

"As the gatekeeping in the novel expands from including only the captain to including the mates, the crew can find value in the doubloon, the supposed motivation to be the first to sight Moby Dick. Likewise in digital culture, expanded gatekeeping allows for more people to find value in information and media that before might not have appealed or been available to them."

I just equate the two: Moby Dick and digital culture. This is like this. When really, what I meant to say, and what I hope comes across better in the rest of my paper (which you can read here), is a bit more nuanced.

Anyway, feel free to read and comment on my paper if you wish. You can even point out more bad analogies if you want.

And here are some more bad analogies, just for fun (from funny2.com):


The wheel of love had left its tread marks in his chest once too often, like a knobby mud tire on a monster truck, or like a really big ponce wheel, the kind that tailors use to punch little holes in patterns and that would leave lots of nasty little welts if you were to run it up and down your arm. (Peter Loughlin)

I saw her sitting at the bar. I approached. "Hello," she said in a voice so husky it could pull a dogsled. (Dan Yell)

Captain Burton stood at the bow of his massive sailing ship, his weathered face resembling improperly cured leather that wouldn't even be used to make a coat or something. (Bryan Semrow)

The sun rose over the horizon like a great big radioactive baby's head with a bad sunburn, but then again it might just have been that Lisa was always cranky this early in the morning. (Debra Allen)

Jane was toast, and not the light buttery kind, nay, she was the kind that's been charred and blackened in the bottom of the toaster and has to be thrown a away because no matter how much of the burnt part you scrape off with a knife, there's always more blackened toast beneath, the kind that not even starving birds in winter will eat, that kind of toast. (Beth Knutson)

As Fiona slowly drew the heavy velvet curtain aside, her eyes smoldered black, deep, and dark as inside the lungs of a coal miner, although it would be black in anyone's lungs if you could get in there because there wouldn't be any light, even in the pink ones of people who don't smoke. (Lou A. Waller)

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30. (Roy Ashley)