When You Ride Alone You Ride With Hitler: A Metaphoric Analysis. Metaphors are one of the oldest studied forms of rhetoric. To Aristotle, metaphors

Gruber 1 Blake J Gruber Rhet 257: Rhetorical Criticism Professor Hovden 16 April 2010 When You Ride Alone You Ride With Hitler: A Metaphoric Analysis Metaphors are one of the oldest studied forms of rhetoric. To Aristotle, metaphors exemplified style and lacked substance, but over time people began systematically studying metaphors and how they function to help people understand the world around them. Metaphors illustrate one s thought process and how they come to a conclusion, as well as shape one s thoughts and values. Metaphoric criticism, is a perspective that places metaphors at the heart of rhetorical action (Burgchardt, 337). War propaganda often capitalized on the metaphor in visual representation, as metaphors can very easily get a message to stick with the audience. This is especially true for the war propaganda posters that circulated during WWII. A particularly bewildering poster, promoting car-pooling, depicts a translucent image of Hitler riding in the passenger seat with a man. The image and text of the poster are both metaphors, and thus metaphoric criticism will be ideal to analyze the propaganda image. First, a description of the image and metaphoric criticism must be discussed. Then, the adaptations necessary and problems that may occur with adapting metaphoric criticism to analyze this non-traditional form of rhetoric will be examined. From these discussions it becomes apparent that metaphoric criticism is a highly effective means to analyze non-traditional rhetoric, such as the car-pool war propaganda poster. The car-sharing propaganda poster itself appears to be a metaphor. A black car with leather colored seats on top of a yellow backdrop is the setting of the poster. The subject matter

Gruber 2 is an inconspicuous, unidentifiable man wearing a dark suite, green tie, and brimmed hat. The eye-catching message is sitting next to him, a white-outlined transparent Hitler riding in the passenger seat. Hitler s face, although hard to tell for certain, looks stern, and the driver s looks somewhat devious. The text reads in black at the top When you ride ALONE you ride with Hitler!, and at the bottom in yellow it reads, Join a Car-Sharing Club TODAY! This message is a metaphoric image attempting to express the importance of car-sharing during war-time. Metaphoric criticism could be helpful in examining this image, but first the methods of metaphoric criticism need to be discussed. When performing metaphoric criticism, The metaphoric critic focuses on describing, evaluating, and understanding such metaphors as vital rhetorical phenomena (Burgchardt, 337). To analyze a given piece of rhetoric first the specific type of metaphor to be analyzed must be distinguished. Since many metaphors can have multiple meanings, the text must be understood as a whole in order to establish the context of the metaphor. From here the metaphor can be isolated and examined more closely. The critic must identify the tenor, the subject that is being compared, and the vehicle, what the tenor is being compared to. Again, it is important to take the metaphor out of immediate context. Metaphors can be sorted into groups based on similar themes, or their priority to the rhetoric. Once the metaphors in the rhetoric have been selected and organized they must be analyzed (Hovden Class Notes). When analyzing the metaphors in a text, one should observe what ideas the metaphors highlight and mask. Furthermore, the images the metaphors convey about types of people or ideas can also be noted. When fleshing out the metaphor the message the rhetor is trying to convey through the metaphor must be kept in mind, metaphors may provide insight into a speaker s motives or an audience s social reality (Burgchardt, 337). An overall assessment of

Gruber 3 the metaphors can also be discussed. For example, are the metaphors internally consistent? Is there a greater historical use of the narrative? When asking these overarching questions, one must be sure to assess the strength of the analysis. Some dangers of metaphoric criticism are cultural misunderstandings of metaphors, metaphors taken out of context, a loss of the metaphor s origin and thus its meaning, and the context of the metaphor changing over time. However, through successful metaphoric criticism, metaphors can be boiled down to reveal their true meaning and the intentions of the rhetor (Hovden Class Notes). With the precepts of metaphoric criticism established, the ways in which metaphoric criticism can be adapted to analyze non-traditional rhetoric can be examined. Metaphoric criticism will be particularly useful in analyzing the car-sharing propaganda poster because the poster itself is a metaphor. When you ride alone you ride with Hitler is both the main text and image of the propaganda, in other words it s the vehicle of the metaphor. Adapting metaphoric criticism to analyze this image then is relatively straight-forward. In this instance the metaphoric analysis could analyze both the text and image itself. It would follow similar steps to that of a textual metaphoric analysis. For the propaganda image only one metaphor is available to analyze, so there is no need to locate groups of similar metaphors or categorize the metaphors in any way. The second step, analyzing the text and context, will be particularly problematic for the war propaganda image because of its lack of contextual background. Establishing and analyzing the context of the war propaganda image will be the most problematic difficulty in adapting metaphoric criticism to the non-traditional rhetoric. Metaphors rely so heavily on their context and require a comprehensive background and history to be understood correctly. Because metaphors can have specific cultural understandings and their

Gruber 4 contexts are fundamental the specific understanding, often the origin and meaning of the metaphor can become lost if a comprehensive context is missing. Where traditional rhetoric can often provide this necessary background and context, the war image simply cannot. When one views this image today, it seems wildly outlandish, but that is only because most people do not know the context of this image. Thus, outside research would be necessary to establish the background of this message, and why such a baffling metaphor would be used during wartime. The metaphor refers to the necessity of conserving American resources during WWII (Hovden Class Notes). So, the tenor of this metaphor would follow as something like, save gas during wartime by car-pooling because we must conserve America s resources. With a context in place the image makes far more sense, and the impact of such a message can be seen more clearly. In fact, the image of Hitler likely meant far more to citizens during WWII, and thus it is probable that the metaphors current meaning has been skewed over time. Although establishing the context of this metaphor may be problematic for metaphoric criticism because of the brevity of the message, outside research is a simple adaptation that allows metaphoric criticism to fully analyze the non-traditional rhetoric. With a context in place the metaphor can be isolated and further examined. Establishing the tenor and vehicle of this image is made possible with a thorough contextual background, and as discussed previously follow the lines of American conservation during wartime. The vehicle can be taken from the text, or from the image itself. Perhaps why this image can be analyzed so easily by metaphoric criticism is that the image depicts the message, which is blatantly a metaphor. Thus, to recount the vehicle of the metaphor, one could adapt the method by describing the picture rather than the text, as the picture speaks and impacts more than the words do on the poster. There are subtleties within the image that an adapted metaphoric criticism could

Gruber 5 also touch on. For example, the inconspicuous man is a metaphoric image, maybe representing the common individual or any American citizen for that matter. Also, Hitler as a transparent outline must carry with it some metaphoric connotations. By examining the image more closely, especially the metaphoric aspects of the image, metaphoric criticism could distinguish more meaning through the images than just the simple textual metaphor at the top of the poster. After isolating the metaphor an analysis of the metaphor can occur. Like the other aspects of metaphoric criticism, this can be easily adapted to analyze the image so long as a context is established for the image. Analyzing the metaphor reveals highlighted and masked ideas inherent in the metaphor, as well as the rhetor s intentions and views. The rhetor in this case is the United States Government, which clearly views conservation as critical to the war effort. However, without a context, unveiling the intentions of the rhetor and metaphor may be problematic especially in this instance of war propaganda. Metaphoric criticism attempts to answer questions like, do the metaphors used by the rhetor hinder or help the speaker reach his goals? With no context to place the image in, the true intentions of the rhetor, the government, cannot necessarily be disclosed. Their intentions hint at conservation, but perhaps there were other motives behind the image. However, as stated previously setting the image in a thorough context makes establishing motives much less problematic, and easily adapts metaphoric criticism to be applicable to images. This adaptation would allow metaphoric criticism to answer the same research questions as it could for a textual artifact, such as: What do the metaphors suggest about the rhetor s opinions? What ideas are highlighted by the metaphor? And, does the metaphor successfully convey the message to the audience? Metaphoric criticism is an effective and easily applicable method to analyze nontraditional rhetoric. For the purposes of analyzing the car-sharing club war propaganda image

Gruber 6 it is a particularly robust method of analysis, because the image and text on the poster are both metaphoric. Adapting the method of metaphoric criticism to analyze an image is incredibly straight forward. With only one metaphor present in the image, selecting the type of metaphor is simplistic. However, context is where this image becomes problematic for the analysis, but extensive outside research to construct a context is an easy adaptation for the method. With a context in place the metaphor can be isolated, fleshed out, and analysis can be drawn from the image through the lens of metaphoric criticism. Although metaphoric criticism is ideal to analyze this metaphoric image, it still may be lacking in its overall analysis of the image. There may be more to the image s color scheme, the faces of Hitler and the driver, and the play between the image and text that other methods could highlight better. Regardless, metaphoric criticism is easily adaptable and provides a thorough analysis of the war propaganda image.