Identify similes, metaphors and idioms in a story, explain how the author uses them, and explain how the story would change if another character told it

Learning goal: This lesson teaches Ohio's 2026 standard RL.5.4, first implemented in 2027-28: identify the meaning of figurative language such as similes, metaphors and idioms, and determine how they are used in the text. Knowing what a figure of speech means is the first half of the job. The second half is explaining what it does in this story: what it shows about a character, how it creates a mood or how it prepares a reader for what happens next. The lesson also teaches Ohio's 2026 standard RL.5.6: identify the point of view in a literary text and explain how the narrative would be different if told from another character's perspective. The two skills meet in this story, because many of its figures of speech show the garden the way Rosa sees it.

Literal and figurative. Literal language means exactly what the words say. Figurative language uses words in a way that goes beyond their ordinary meaning to create a picture or an idea. "The garden hose was fifty feet long" is literal. "The garden hose was a green snake sleeping in the grass" is figurative: no snake is involved, but the comparison helps you see the coiled hose.

Simile. A simile compares two different things using like or as. "Grandpa's hands were as rough as tree bark." The comparison is between two things that are not the same kind of thing (hands and bark), and the shared quality is roughness. Be careful: not every sentence with like or as is a simile. "I like tomatoes" uses like as a verb. "This tomato is as big as the one we picked yesterday" compares two tomatoes and is meant literally, a fact you could check, so it is a plain comparison, not a simile. What decides it is whether the comparison is literal or imaginative, not only whether the two things are the same kind: "Rosa stomped like an angry toddler" compares a person with a person, but it is imaginative, so it is a simile.

Metaphor. A metaphor compares two different things without like or as; it speaks of one thing as if it were another. Often the verb is is or was, as in "The vegetable patch was a battlefield after the storm," but a metaphor can use other verbs too ("the storm turned the patch into a battlefield"). The garden was not really a battlefield. The metaphor borrows the ideas of damage and struggle. A metaphor is not a lie or a mistake; it is a way of saying something true about the feeling or the look of a thing.

Idiom. An idiom is a phrase whose meaning cannot be worked out from the meanings of its separate words. "She has a green thumb" does not mean her thumb is green; it means she is good at growing plants. "Hit the hay" means go to bed. Because the words do not add up to the meaning, idioms have to be learned, and context helps you check a guess.

How authors use figurative language. Ask four questions: (1) What two things are compared, or what does the idiom mean? (2) What quality is shared or suggested? (3) Who says or thinks it, and what does that show about them? (4) What does it add to the mood, the character or the meaning of the story at this point? A figure of speech in a character's mouth often reveals that character. A figure in the narration often sets the mood.

Original story — The Last Tomato

By August, Grandpa's garden was a jungle. The tomato vines had climbed past their cages and leaned over the path like tired giants, and the zucchini leaves were green umbrellas big enough to hide a cat.

"You have a green thumb," Mrs. Lindqvist from next door told him every week, leaning on the fence. Grandpa always laughed and said, "It's the dirt, not the thumb."

Rosa had come for the whole summer. At first she thought gardening was a piece of cake. You watered, you waited, you picked. Then the beetles came. They chewed lace into the bean leaves overnight, and every morning Rosa and Grandpa went down the rows picking them off by hand. Rosa's back ached like an old door hinge. Some mornings she wanted to throw in the towel.

"Beetles are part of the deal," Grandpa said. "You don't quit a garden because it fights back."

In the last week of August, the weather turned. The wind came howling down the valley one night, and in the morning the vegetable patch was a battlefield. Cages lay on their sides. Vines were snapped. Green tomatoes lay in the mud like lost marbles.

Rosa stood at the edge of the path with her hands in her pockets. Her throat was tight. All summer, and now this.

Grandpa walked slowly down the rows. Near the back fence he stopped and bent over. "Rosa. Come look."

One vine had held. It was tied to the fence post, and at the very top hung a single tomato, red as a stop sign, perfectly round.

"We'll share it," Grandpa said. "Half for you, half for me."

They ate it at the kitchen table with salt, standing up. It was the best thing Rosa had tasted all summer. She did not say so, but she decided, right then, that next spring she would come back early and help tie every vine to the fence.

Using the four questions on one example. Take "the vegetable patch was a battlefield." (1) It is a metaphor comparing the storm-damaged garden to a battlefield. (2) The shared quality is destruction: things knocked over, broken and scattered, the way a battle leaves a field. (3) It is the narrator's description, seen through Rosa's shock. (4) It turns the mood from a busy, crowded summer (the "jungle," the "green umbrellas") to loss. The metaphor makes the damage feel like the end of a long struggle, which fits Rosa's summer of fighting beetles. Without it, "the plants were damaged" would tell the fact but not the feeling.

Figurative language that changes. Notice how the author moves the figures. Early figures are playful and large (a jungle, giants, umbrellas). The middle figures are about effort and wanting to give up (an aching door hinge, throwing in the towel). The storm figures are about damage (a battlefield, lost marbles). The last simile, "red as a stop sign," makes the surviving tomato bright and impossible to miss, the one thing that tells Rosa to stop and notice what held. Tracing the figures across the story shows how they support the theme that effort is worth it even when a season goes badly.

Point of view: who tells the story. Point of view is the position a story is told from. In first-person point of view, a character tells the story and uses I and me. In third-person point of view, a narrator outside the story tells it and calls every character he, she or they. "The Last Tomato" is told in the third person: the narrator is not Rosa or Grandpa, and says "Rosa had come for the whole summer" and "She did not say so." A third-person narrator can report the thoughts of many characters or stay close to one. This narrator stays close to Rosa. We learn what Rosa feels inside ("Her throat was tight. All summer, and now this.") and a decision she tells no one ("she decided, right then, that next spring she would come back early"). We learn Grandpa only from the outside, through what he says and does: he "walked slowly down the rows," and he says, "You don't quit a garden because it fights back." The story never tells us what Grandpa felt when he saw the storm damage.

Point of view and perspective are different. Point of view names who tells the story. A character's perspective is how that character sees and feels about what happens. Rosa sees the storm as the end of a whole summer's work, and the figures of speech show it: the garden becomes "a battlefield" and the tomatoes "lost marbles." Grandpa has gardened for years and treats trouble as normal ("Beetles are part of the deal").

How the story would change if another character told it. To explain how a narrative would be different from another character's perspective, ask three questions. (1) What would this character know that the story does not tell us now? (2) What would this character not know that the story tells us now? (3) How would this character describe the same events, judging from what the character says and does in the story? Suppose Grandpa told the story in the first person and told only what he knew at the time. The reader could learn what he felt as he walked the rows and whether he had tied that one vine to the fence post himself, and why (a narrator does not have to share every thought, but this one could); the story says only that the vine "was tied." He could not directly report Rosa's secret decision at that moment, because "She did not say so," and he could only guess it from how she looks and acts. The storm morning might be described in calmer words than "battlefield," since Grandpa treats setbacks as part of gardening. The events would stay the same; what changes is what the narrator knows, notices and feels. Any guess about how a character would tell the story must be based on that character's words and actions in the text, not on what you would feel.

A misconception to avoid. Some readers think that finding a simile and naming it earns full credit. Labeling is only identification. The standard asks you to determine how the figure is used: what it shows, where, and why it matters in this text.

Worked example 1 — A simile. "Rosa's back ached like an old door hinge." Meaning: her back hurt and felt stiff, the way a rusty hinge creaks and resists moving. Use in the text: it comes in the middle of the beetle-picking, so it shows how hard and repetitive the work was and prepares for Rosa wanting to quit. It uses like and compares two different kinds of things, so it is a simile.

Worked example 2 — An idiom. "Some mornings she wanted to throw in the towel." The words alone suggest tossing a towel. The idiom means to give up. Context proves it: the sentence follows her aching back and the beetles, and Grandpa answers, "You don't quit a garden because it fights back." Use in the text: the idiom shows Rosa's discouragement in casual, everyday language, and Grandpa's reply turns it into the story's central question: will she quit?

Worked example 3 — Telling a figure from a literal comparison. Which is a simile: (a) "Green tomatoes lay in the mud like lost marbles" or (b) "the tomato was as big as the one Rosa picked in July"? Sentence (a) compares tomatoes to marbles, two different kinds of things, to suggest small, round, scattered objects that someone has lost; it is a simile that adds to the sense of loss. Sentence (b) uses as, but it is meant literally: it compares the sizes of two tomatoes, a fact you could check, so it is a plain size comparison, not a simile. Explaining the difference, not just spotting like or as, is the skill.

Worked example 4 — The same morning from another perspective. Question: What is the point of view of "The Last Tomato," and how would the storm morning be different if Grandpa told it? Step 1, identify the point of view: third person; the narrator is outside the story and stays close to Rosa, reporting her feelings ("Her throat was tight"). Step 2, list what only Rosa's side gives the reader: her tight throat, her thought "All summer, and now this," and her unspoken decision to come back. Step 3, list what Grandpa knows that the story does not tell: what he felt walking the rows and whether he tied that vine to the post himself, and why (the story says only that it "was tied"). Step 4, use his words and actions to predict his telling: he says, "You don't quit a garden because it fights back," so he would probably describe the damage as a setback, not the end. Answer: "Told by Grandpa in the first person, the morning would show Rosa from the outside, standing at the edge of the path with her hands in her pockets, without her tight throat. The reader could learn Grandpa's own feelings, which the story now hides, and the ending could not report Rosa's decision directly, because she never says it aloud."

Representation task — figurative language log. Copy a four-column table: Quotation | Type (simile, metaphor, idiom) | Meaning in plain words | How it is used here (character, mood or meaning). Fill in at least six rows from "The Last Tomato," including at least one of each type. In a final row, write one sentence describing how the figures change from the start to the end of the story.

Independent performance. Choose a chapter from a novel or a short story you are reading. Find three figures of speech: a simile, a metaphor and an idiom if the text has one (if it does not, find a second simile or metaphor). For each, write a short paragraph that quotes it exactly, names its type, explains its meaning and explains how the author uses it in that part of the text. Then identify the point of view of your chapter, with evidence, and write a paragraph explaining how one event in it would be different if another character told it.

Success criteria: Each quotation is copied exactly in quotation marks. Each type is correct, and you explain why (like/as, a direct comparison, or a phrase whose words do not add up to its meaning). Each meaning is stated in plain words. Each explanation of use names a specific effect (what it shows about a character, what mood it creates, or how it connects to what happens next) and points to the part of the text where that effect matters. You name the point of view correctly and prove it with the pronouns and what the narrator reports. Your retelling paragraph says what the new narrator would know, would not know and would describe differently, keeps the events the same and bases each change on that character's words or actions in the text.