Please help me with this English question.

Question

The quotation is an example of a metaphor. Explain why. "In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds."

Answer 1

so, civilized life is a chopping sea; that is a metaphor, I believe. "Civilized life" is compared to a "chopping sea", even though in regular circumstances you wouldn't put those two together.

Then, "the clouds and storms and quicksand" are a metaphor as well, for all the things a man has to live through and endure.

A metaphor compares two unlikely things with each other, it says that an object or person or idea is something else, which it is clearly not.

For example: She is a breeze of fresh air. --> Of course a person cannot be a breeze of fresh air, but the metaphor serves to describe the person in more detail. Metaphor is figurative not literal.

Don't confuse metaphors and similes.

Similes include the word "like": She is like a fresh breeze. Or as above: Civilized life is like a chopping sea.

Metaphors don't use the word "like", they just go right into it and compare the two unrelated things directly, often with the verb "to be".