Need help with metaphors.

Question

Could anyone please explain the following metaphors:

1. Death to Rebirth.

2. Captivity to Liberation.

3. Caterpillar to Butterfly.

4. Metaphor of Transformation (in General).

5. Crucifixion/Resurrection Metaphor.

Answer 1

Change.

Answer 2

Everything listed points to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

1) Death to rebirth = Baptism

2) Captivity to Liberation = Atonement / Salvation

3) Caterpillar to Butterfly = new creation / rebirth.  When we accepted Christ and were baptized, a transformation took place.

4) Metaphor of Transformation = "Born Again"

5) Crucifixion/Resurrection Metaphor = Gospel

Answer 3

1. as a phoenix does it is reborn through it's ashes

2. Even though a free man may be free he is not if he is a prisoner of his own mind.

got about that far.

Answer 4

1. is not actually a metaphor. It wishes for the concept of "rebirth" to over and done with, conceptually dead, something that people will no longer consider. Perhaps the "rebirth" it means is "born again." Perhaps it means anything and everything that denies one life, lived on earth, after which you no longer exist. I can't say. But I don't take it as a metaphor.

2. Same with 2, except it's backwards. Liberation should not become captive to anything, unless the liberation is backwards, like the "liberation" of Cuba from the nasty capitalists. The American revolution was in the other direction, away from the power of men to rule, and gave birth to the first nation based on the rule of law. To be sure, other nations were close, but like England and France, they still had monarchs to deal with. Revolutions that go backwards in human right OUGHT to be in captivity. That is why I don't take that as a metaphor, either.

3. This can apply to anything that moves in a transition from one thing, to a thing more beautiful. That beauty may be anything--political, as in the American revolution; or aesthetic like the changing of science from being purely observational, as in the manner of Aristotle, to being purely fact driven as it is now.

4. I don't know.

5. Let me quote others:

"Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the nonideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used."

“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” March 1964.

"...the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his

ascension through the air, is a thing very different as to the

evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the

womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken

place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the

ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon-day, to all Jerusalem at

least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that

the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal;

and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only

evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of

it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead

of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are

introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all

the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears

that Thomas did not believe the resurrection, and, as they say,

would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration

himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for

me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

"Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is,

had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit

himself on a cross, in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his

new transgression, the story would have been less absurd- less

contradictory. But instead of this, they make the transgressor

triumph, and the Almighty fall. [As Ayn Rand pointed out.]

"That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived

very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime), is

what I have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to

believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same

manner. There are also many who have been so enthusiastically

enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to

man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the

idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more it is capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration."

Thomas Paine

"The Age of Reason."

Look at the last sentence for the answer to 5. I had to include all the rest to make the last sentence make sense.

My own site uses no metaphors, or very few. I'm terrible at using them. I have no gift. Sometimes when I read them, they go right over my head. I'm too literal. But I hope you find my site educational. Thanks.

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

Answer 5

These all seem to follow the theme of going from cold, dark, small, limited place to a new bright happy future.  It's just not the transformation of the person, but the transformation of their *experience*.   i.e. not a change from Bob into Joe... but a change from Bob a sad / limited person, to Bob full of possibilities.