 To understand Synecdoche, you need to first understand the concepts of metaphor and metonymy. If you don't have a solid grasp of metaphor and metonymy, videos on both of those concepts are available through the Oregon State Guide to Literary Terms. Metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche are all kinds of figurative language that use one thing to help us understand something else. A metonym, as you know, replaces something you want to characterize with something else associated with it. A synecdoche is a kind of metonym, but the associated thing is actually a component part, a piece of whatever you are characterizing. When we talk about getting boots on the ground, we're using a synecdoche. By boots, we mean soldiers. But boots are part of the soldiers, at least when they are dressed. So this expression is really a synecdoche rather than just a metonym. The super classic example of synecdoche, the one you'll find on every website, is 50 keels plowed the deep, 50 ships are sailing on the ocean, represented by their keels, a component part of the vessel, thus standing for the whole. The poet Allen Ginsberg was a great lover of synecdoche. Two examples are afforded by his poem, Supermarket in California, and understanding these examples helps us interpret Ginsberg's themes. In the poem, the narrator fantasizes about following the 19th century poet Walt Whitman around a mid-20th century grocery store. He overhears Whitman ask the grocer in the meat section, who killed the pork chops? That's a synecdoche. It was, of course, the pig, not the pork chop that was killed. The pork chop is the fragmented part that stands for the whole. A few lines later, the narrator addresses Whitman as his dear father, Graybeard, lonely old courage teacher. Graybeard here is also a synecdoche. Ginsberg affectionately invokes Whitman's famous beard to stand for the whole man and to indicate how Whitman's wise example gives him courage. How can tracking Ginsberg's use of synecdoche help us interpret the poem? This is a verse in which the narrator struggles with feelings of connection and disconnection. He feels connected to Whitman, but isn't sure that Whitman's optimistic vision of society applies to the dismantled post-World War II culture in which Ginsberg lives. The first synecdoche about the pork chops is horrifying and a little gross. It's meant to shock and to capture a world in which we think only in terms of cut-up commodities that we purchase, pork chops. The second synecdoche does the opposite. It creates an affectionate, tender, and reverential connection between Ginsberg and Whitman by referring to the earlier poet as Ginsberg's Graybeard, his wise and older source of inspiration. As a supermarket in California, then, synecdoche is used to establish both moods of the poem, that of fragmentation and that of connectivity. To see the synecdoche is not just to see the clever use of a particular kind of literary language, but to encounter the central themes of the poem as a whole.