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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Forever Strangers:
At the end of Chapter 1, Richard describes how, after he left the orphanage, he briefly visited his father at his new home, where his father lives with a "strange woman," his girlfriend. Richard then foreshadows the future, to a moment not seen elsewhere in the novel:
A quarter of a century was to elapse [before] [...] I was to see him again, standing alone upon the red clay of a Mississippi [...] when I tried to talk to him I realized that, though ties of blood made us kin, though I could see a shadow of my face on his face, though there was an echo of my voice in his voice, we were forever strangers, speaking a different language, living on vastly distant planes of reality.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Hated Home:
Richard is pleased, in Chapter 2, to find out that he and his family will move in with his mother's cousin in Elaine, Arkansas, and that they will visit Granny in Jackson on the way. He describes this pleasure using both a metaphor and a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As the words fell from my mother's lips, a long and heavy anxiety lifted from me. Excited, I rushed about and gathered my ragged clothes. I was leaving the hated home, hunger, fear, leaving days that had been as dark and lonely as death.
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Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Seeped Into Us:
In Chapter 3, time jumps forward to when Richard is about 10 years old. He has become more aware of racism as a force that affects his life. He describes the new perspective that he and his friends hold using a metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+All the frightful descriptions we had heard about each other, all the violent expressions of hate and hostility that had seeped into us from our surroundings, came now to the surface to guide our actions.
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Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Blinded by the Light:
In Chapter 11, Richard moves to Memphis and moves in quickly with the Moss family. Their daughter, Bess, takes an immediate liking to Richard, but she confuses him, as he expresses in a metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I had come from a home where feelings were never expressed, except in rage or religious dread, where each member of the household lived locked in his own dark world, and the light that shone out of this child's heart—for she was a child—blinded me.
Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—I Held My Life:
In Chapter 13, Richard begins to read from the library extensively. In the meantime, Richard's brother and mother have moved to Memphis to live with him. In his library books, Richard reads about a world that he never knew and metaphorically expresses that his existence will always be precarious:
Unlock with LitCharts A+What, then, was there? I held my life in my mind, in my consciousness each day, feeling at times that I would stumble and drop it, spill it forever. My reading had created a vast sense of distance between me and the world in which I lived and tried to make a living, and that sense of distance was increasing each day. My days and nights were one long, quiet, continuously contained dream of terror, tension, and anxiety. I wondered how long I could bear it.
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