Why Is Metaphor Important

Importance of Metaphor Despite the seemingly incompatibility between metaphor and an ability to transmit fact, metaphors are an importance point of access we have to it. It also has the capability to make facts more applicable to our understanding. Facts use metaphors as their mode of transport out of non-existence and into the concrete realm. Initially, figurative language allows for a concept to be imagined and thus brought into existence. Thought and knowledge effect the way in which humans act and interact. Ultimately, “to leave Auschwitz outside of metaphor would be to leave it outside of language altogether.” (Young). Pushing it out of language keeps it from frames of knowledge and thus making it incomprehensible. In Jewish history, great instances of suffering were told through poetic form. This religious and cultural fervor was not mentioned in non-fiction genres like newspaper accounts. It was, instead, spread amongst the people and to future generations through poetry and figurative language. In Kaplan’s diary, he notices the importance of poetry and pleads for a …show more content…
As discussed before, memory is a finicky process that skews facts and adjusts particulars and is taken only in one context or point of view. Even so, the ‘facts’ of these accounts are not nearly as important as truth behind a writer’s interpretation of events and the role of the writer and their community. Knowing a person’s point of view can help us better understand their actions and that of a nation. Events do not offer meanings. It is what is felt during them that does and the connections that people make with them after they occur. What makes a diary authentic is its interpretive magnitude instead of its ‘factuality’. In conclusion, literary testimony should not be scrutinized for its accuracy, but rather to determine how the experience of the author was