Extended Metaphors In The Life Of King

In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster stresses that there is always symbols in a story that have a deeper meaning than one assumes. The author places allusions and metaphors in certain places throughout a story to add a secondary meaning to the text. Shakespeare’s The Life of King Henry the Eighth speech is about one losing their pride and everything they got. They have lost their greatness that they had worked up into achieving and now they know that they may never get it back. The plot of Shakespeare’s The Life of King Henry the Eighth relates to Professor Foster’s guide on symbols adding a secondary meaning, as the speech contains many symbols that unfold the deeper meaning of the speech and provides a feel of the story through the use of extended metaphors and allusions to

Shakespeare writes, “ The tender leaves of hopes, to-morrow blossoms,/ And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;/ The third day comes a frost, a killing frost . . . “ (Shakespeare 3. 2. 353-55). The leaves blossoming symbolize the person putting a continuous amount of work into getting something and finally getting the prize they have been working hard for. The person is getting more powerful with their pride, but then, something knocks that person down. The frost is what kills the blossom, which symbolizes the killing of the person’s greatness and pride. In Professor Foster’s guide, he mentions “That shared storehouse of figuration - that is, types of figurative representation such as symbols, metaphors, allegory, imagery - allows us, even encourage us, to discover possibilities in a text beyond the literal” (Foster 243) meaning that the symbols mentioned in the poem are for the reader to see beyond just leaves blossoming. The symbol is there for the reader to comprehend that it symbolizes a person losing the pride they once