2025-02-06
I think they are an efficient and concise way to get your point across. A sentence like "Jack is hungry" is brief which normally implies that the meaning it carries is also shallow and unspecific. But, similes and metaphors create an exception to this norm about brief sentences. When you change it to "Jack is hungry as a wolf", it's still brief, but the simile has added dimensionality and depth to the meaning. That is, the pairing simile has upgraded the definition of "hungry" and equipped it with a few layers of depth without having to use or look for a more complicated word that nails down the specific variant you intended to convey with the original phrase. You could've also used an intensifier like "very" to modify this degree of meaning. But, in my opinion, a simile or metaphor is stronger. They're efficient because to exactly describe how Jack is hungry, you could say "Jack is so hungry that he could eat tons of meat, and he's so furious". This has the problem of being lengthy, and possibly lacks a few more descriptions to conceive the desired imagery in your head. Eating lots of meat, and being furious are qualities that a wolf possess—well, stereotypically—so, the sentence could easily be reworded as "Jack is hungry as a wolf". The new sentence is short yet deep, as opposed to the former which is longer and not as deep. You could think of "wolf" as a container of the many unreachable words in your head, that is, "Jack is hungry as a [wolf]" can be rephrased or expanded into "Jack is hungry [{that he can, he is, etc.}-{all the qualities of a wolf}]", and this could end up being a several more sentences while a simile could've done a better job in just a sentence! A shortcoming of this construct though is that the meaning may vary to everyone; it depends on how a wolf looks like in their heads, that is, if they even know what a wolf is. That is true of most usage of figurative language.
I would like to also add that the said shortcoming is most likely same one that Jesus took advantage of when he was teaching the people in parables, to divide his listeners and prevent just anyone from understanding them. The meaning of the parables varied across the people, and his disciplines were the only ones who understood them. Everyone else found them obscure.
I think it's reasonable to claim that the understanding of metaphors among people is never uniform, as people have uniquely different lived experienced and/or socioeconomic conditions. But, I believe that whether this is a shortcoming, depends on the context. I may have implicitly bound it to usage within literature in my first paragraph, but they are evidently problematic in areas like politics, colloquial conversations, and academia. For example, in physics, it's common to use analogies to approach complex ideas, like electricity to water. But, only temporarily. It's agreed upon to be a great analogy, but they certainly don't hold true anymore when you stretch them too far, and try to understand all electricity's properties from the lens of the analogy. At this point, your brain tries its best to repack it within the confines of the analogy, but this even confuses you more, and you ultimately regret knowing the analogy in first place, as its perhaps the easiest/fastest thought your brain recalls when it attempts to understand the real concept outside of its analogical form, and then you're forced to confront the unfortunate reality with no analogies to help you. I think they are like training wheels; you don't realize you can't ride a bicycle until you take them off. However, their usage in areas like literature and so, is fine for the majority of people I believe—except for some with cognitive disabilities who may struggle to comprehend them. I can also imagine metaphors being used to gate keep information or to secretively communicate.