The Body (metaphor)
Socrates often makes comparisons to the body as a way of clarifying the soul. Just as the body can be healthy or healthy, the soul can be healthy or unhealthy, too. The goal of philosophy is to make the soul healthy.
Pastries (metaphor)
Throughout, Socrates uses the metaphor of cookery to explain rhetoric. Just as pastries taste good, but are ultimately fattening and unhealthy, so too does rhetoric flatter people who hear it into thinking that they are good, while actually making them worse.
The Boxer (simile)
Gorgias compares a rhetorician who uses his skills irresponsibly to a boxer who goes around beating people up when he is not in the ring.
Nudity (metaphor)
In Socrates' description of the Judgment of Naked Souls, he stresses that both the judges and the souls are naked. Nudity for Socrates is a way of finally separating appearance from reality. Rhetoric is all about making people appear good or wise, without actually being good or wise. Socrates longs for a state of nakedness when appearance will no longer distract from reality.
Cosmetics (simile)
Socrates compares rhetoric to rouge or lipstick, which makes someone's face appear more beautiful than it actually is.
