i've been dancing around the topic of juxtaposition and metaphor for some time now and some of the notable examples i can give are rarely from pictures or the like. Instead, I prefer to quote from rhymes, as in rap rhyme.
Not kindergarten rhymes if you were wondering.
Juxtaposition:
- the act of positioning close together (or side by side); "it is the result of the juxtaposition of contrasting colors"
- a side-by-side position
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - A placing or being placed in nearness or contiguity, or side by side, often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences; An absence of linking elements in a group of words that are listed together; Two or more contrasting sounds, registers, styles etc. ...
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/juxtaposition
Simile:
- A figure of speech in which one thing is compared to another, in the case of English generally using like or as
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/simile - Simile is a comparison of two dissimilar objects that uses the words like or as. See, for example, Karen Connelly's description of herself in "Touch the Dragon": "As the country pulls out from under me, I overturn like a glass of water on a yanked tablecloth, I spill. ...
www.pearsoned.ca/text/flachmann4/gloss_iframe.html - a figure that explicitly expresses the comparison, often signaled by "like" or "as"
www.indiana.edu/~bestsell/glossary.html - A comparison, usually using "like" or "as", of two essentially dissimilar things, as in "coffee as cold as ice" or "He sounded like a broken record." The title of Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" contains a simile. (Compare with Metaphor.)
www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/glossary/glossary_s.htm
source: google define
So, lets look at juxtaposition first.
The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac
Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.
This was from Tupac, and it was written some time around 89'-91' right when his name is growing in his hometown Harlem - where a lot of other rappers from.
Now if we see closely, clearly, a rose cannot grow out from concrete.
And yet, it did. And what Tupac was trying to achieve from this is not to show about that rose, but to show him. Its the reaction of people when he talk about the place where he grew from.
"You grow up there? Daaymmnn."
Harlem if you don't know it is a very harsh place to live in back in the days. That place is really ghetto, people get killed for drugs and gangs. If you're not in a gang, you'll die unprotected. But if you are in a gang, you'll probably get shot too.
So, lol.
Anyway, though this was one of the few first pieces that he produced for the masses, it was so finely written that we can feel the emotion he's portraying.
When people saw a rose growing from concrete, people won't go "Damn look at the rose, its so beautiful and thorny and all. I want to pluck it for my girlfriend."
No, people will go "Daamn that rose grew out from a CONCRETE! I mean, when else can you see that? Thats just impossible man!"
He's truly a rose that grew from concrete
RIP Man
Another thing to look at is simile.
"I'm cooler than a polar bear's toenails... bend corners like I was a curve, I struck a nerve."
- Big Boi on "Atliens," Atliens
"Me without a mic is like a beat without a snare...
I'm sweet like licorice, dangerous like syphilis."
- Lauryn Hill on "How Many Mics," The Score
"I come fresh like your breath after you brush,
wack Mc's like that orange soda get crushed."
- Fatlip on "Pharcyde," Labcabincalifornia
"Throwing out the wicked like God did the devil,
funky like your grandpa's drawers, don't test me,
we're in like that, you're dead like Presley."
- Q-Tip on "Steve Biko," Midnight Marauders
"My rhymes are like shot clocks,
interstate cops
and blood clots,
my point is your flow gets stopped."
- Talib Kweli on "Hater Players," Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Blackstar
These people are geniuses in hip hop and they are nothing like today's rappers. People like 50 Cent, Chingy, Caprice and all the lot, they're destroying rap music.
But we'll save that for another time.
We can see the rhyme structure fits nicely and we get to 'see' what the writer is trying to convey. Its so awesome to read something and feel the emotion and mind of the writer.
"Dead like Presley."
Come on, how dead can you be?
lol
