Lady, EVOLVED 
a metaphor is…
• when something in a story is made to stand in for something in real life?
• a figure of speech which equates a thing with something else which has similar qualities?
@Lady all my English teachers claimed the second one, but in actual use I hear the first one a lot more often
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@Forestofglory this is my take; i think the english teachers were oversimplifying and wrong
(descriptively, of course, i think both uses are valid, but when someone asks “does this story contain any metaphors” you have to pick an interpretation, and i think there is a right answer of which to pick in this case)
@Forestofglory i think we should choose interpretations of literary words which engender deeper thought, analysis, and criticism, not interpretations which are a simple box-check in a multiple-choice form