Donald Davidsons What Metaphors Mean Essay -- Writing Literary Essays

Donald Davidson's What Metaphors Mean Our literal understandings of a word are twins in constant opposition with one another, twins in constant competition to receive the most love from their mother and father. Let us pretend the parents are the literary community that demonstrates love frequently by showing a preference for one of their twins. Donald Davidson's theory expressed in What Metaphors Mean is a tragic, intellectual miscarriage; it is a theory of language that brings forth a stillborn child, a dead metaphor. Do you see the candle there in the window? What does it mean to you, and is your understanding of its "ordinary" essence, its literal meaning, identical to mine? Davidson assumes we both clearly know and agree upon its literal meaning, that it is literally "a cylindrical mass of tallow or wax with a wick through its center, which gives light when burned." Contrarily, however, I believe our understandings of a simple word like candle often file for divorce because they cannot resist the semantic temptation of what I metaphorically call literal-meaning infidelity. Metaphorical meaning is a sex object for literal meaning, and the mind of a creative artist, a lover of humanities and poetry, is incapable of not pursing this with passion unleashed via creative language-libido. This kind of person has a mind fundamentally opposed to the Davidsonesque mind, a mind that is constantly discovering (if he reads a book of prose or poetry) and inventing (if he writes with a pen in his hand) the me taphorical connection with lust filled eyes. The above literal, dictionary definition of candle is not the first definition that enters my mind, I am afraid, and thus how can there only exist a literal "surface" meaning inside... ...rn to a state of mind that only acknowledges objective, literal meanings in words, denying language its natural tendency of allowing meanings to evolve and expand. It is imperative for us, especially all poets and writers of prose that use language to express figurative meaning, to critique this theory because it only decreases creativity and denies that artist say anything beyond the literal with their words and metaphors. Davidson's ideas violently affront to the purpose of our craft. If we become completely dependent upon objective, literal meaning and learn to reject subjective, figurative meaning in words, we will consequently become less human and more detached from the world, from our natural surroundings, from our fellow human beings, and from the spontaneous, creative voices deep in our guts that often speak of truths literal expression cannot capture.