Storytelling as Personal Metaphor?

Writers of fiction and creative non-fiction know the value of metaphor. So you might be interested in recent research by Adam Fetterman and colleagues suggesting that life is different for people who think in metaphors. Having developed a means of measuring metaphoric thinking style among students, they found that people rate neutral words as more pleasant when they’re printed in a white font than in a black one (evidently, none of their subjects had ageing eyes which renders light print virtually impossible to read); that among those prone to metaphorical thinking, the more sweet food they’d eaten, the more sweet their interactions with others (presumably within limits, I’m not terribly sociable if I’m feeling sick); and that those with a stronger metaphoric thinking style showed greater insight into the emotions of others. As you can see, aside from the fact that many metaphors are actually clichės, I’m a little sceptical about this research but, not having read the full report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’m not in a position to argue.

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I’m sharing this research today because I enjoy linking psychology to writing, and because I’ve been thinking about metaphor since my brief residency on Sherri Matthews’s Summerhouse with a post on putting the personal into fiction. The way in which I keep on chewing at the subject of memoir suggests there’s something seductive for me in that area. I do relate to the desire to set the record straight, to tell all and to be completely understood. But I also think it’s an impossible dream. I’ve come to a (perhaps) crude demarcation between memoir and personal fiction (which might work for no-one else but me) in memoir for social history and fiction for personal metaphor for the stories we need to tell ourselves.

We’re familiar with construing the short story or novel as a metaphor or allegory for, in any age, our troublesome times. Science fiction, in particular, is often viewed as a fantasy of what could be, and disguised social commentary on what is. But I haven’t come across a reference to fiction as a metaphor for the author’s personal story that, for various reasons, can’t be told. Yet I think that comes pretty close to what we’re doing when we write in a way that’s personal but not autobiographical.

I hope to have more to say about fiction as metaphor in a later post, but if the notion seems strange, consider the fairy-tale: horror stories told to very young children that they seem to adore. But, as many have observed, fairy-tales function as a metaphor for the young child’s most basic fears: harsh parenting; abandonment; sibling rivalry, as well as their wish for magical solutions. Somehow, through these stories, they can distance themselves from, and gain mastery over, the anxieties that arise from such a powerless position.

Carrot Rancher Charli Mills has blogged about fairy-tales recently, inviting us to compose 99-word stories beginning Once upon a time … I decided to be totally childish with this one, though I leave it to you to decide if there’s a deeper meaning:

Once upon a time there was a lonely little earthworm. He wasn’t born lonely; he’d been happy tunnelling through the humus until a spade sliced through his mother. As she twitched at both ends he thought it must be true that worms don’t die. Until she stopped moving completely.

He searched for friends among the children digging in the dirt. But when he wrapped himself around their stubby fingers, they squealed and shook him off.

A blackbird almost caught him as he wriggled into compost, ready to expire. Until a galaxy of red brandlings welcomed him to their world.