Definition of Metaphor
Growing up, Noah's mother Patricia did not allow Noah to consume forms of popular culture such as movies, music, or comic books. With a metaphor, Noah explains how church and the Bible became his outlets:
The only music I knew was from church: soaring, uplifting songs praising Jesus. It was the same with movies. My mom didn’t want my mind polluted by movies with sex and violence. So the Bible was my action movie. Samson was my superhero. He was my He-Man. A guy beating a thousand people to death with the jawbone of a donkey? That’s pretty badass.
For Noah, the church is his playground and the Bible his "action movie." Raised by a strictly religious mother, Noah has no option but to follow her to church every Sunday. Church on Sundays, though, is an all-day affair for Noah's family: they attend mixed racial megachurch, White church, and Black church, finishing well after dark.
In true Trevor Noah fashion, he takes an adversity or limitation in his life—in this case, lack of access to popular culture—and makes it lighthearted and special. The reader might find Noah's situation pitiful or distressing, but Noah helps them understand that when things are less than ideal, children find a way to be children regardless. They find a way to entertain themselves or look for the silver lining in situations. And so, for Noah, the characters in the Bible become the superheroes in his comic book.
Reflecting on the time of his birth, Noah uses a metaphor (the same metaphor in that serves at the title of his memoir) to depict the true impossibility of his existence:
Nine months after that yes, on February 20, 1984, my mother checked into Hillbrow Hospital for a scheduled C-section delivery. Estranged from her family, pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public, she was alone. The doctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and pulled out a half-white, half-black child who violated any number of laws, statutes, and regulations—I was born a crime.
By calling himself "a crime" at birth, Noah frames the miraculous and highly illegal circumstances under which he was born. Since Noah's father is White and his mother is Black, and mixed-race partnerships were illegal under South African apartheid, Noah's very existence as a mixed-race person is inherently political. With this metaphor, then, Noah paints himself as a physical manifestation of his mother's rebellion against apartheid and its unjust laws. He is proof of the system's absurdity. Any adherence to the system is completely arbitrary, entirely detached from any social or moral justice. Noah's existence defies expectations and demonstrates that race alone truly has no bearing on one's ability to succeed, learn, achieve, and act. Economic opportunity, social mobility, and equal freedoms are the important factors that should be considered. Without these facets of life, it is no wonder that Noah lived in poverty and his friends in cramped townships, many of them engaging in criminal activity just to get by.
As Noah grows up, he begins to understand the complexities of race in South Africa. With a metaphor, Noah describes his attempt to "bridge the race gap":
They were ready to do me violent harm, until they felt we were part of the same tribe, and then we were cool. That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people. I became a chameleon. My color didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn’t look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.
Growing up, Noah's mother Patricia makes sure that Noah learned English, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, German, and Sotho. With knowledge and fluency in all of these languages, Noah can communicate with just about anyone, anywhere. In the passage, Noah compares himself to a chameleon, an animal that can change its exterior color to blend in or become invisible in its surroundings. Clearly, changing his color and therefore his race is an impossibility. Yet, Noah realizes that language is a far more powerful force of acceptance or denial in Johannesburg society than skin color, particularly for someone who does not visually fit into any one category. With his knowledge of languages, both Patricia and Noah are able to get themselves out of sticky situations and affect others' impressions of them.
Noah uses a crass metaphor to illustrate the absurdity and crudity of South African apartheid:
They were second-class citizens, denied the rights of white people but given special privileges that black people didn’t have, just to keep them holding out for more. […] “You’re almost there. You’re so close. You’re this close to being white. Pity your grandfather couldn’t keep his hands off the chocolate, eh? But it’s not your fault you’re colored, so keep trying. Because if you work hard enough you can erase this taint from your bloodline. Keep on marrying lighter and whiter and don’t touch the chocolate and maybe, maybe, someday, if you’re lucky, you can become white.”
This metaphor designates Black people as "chocolate" and depicts "colored" (mixed-race) people as having no willpower to deny said "chocolate." At the time, all non-White South Africans were considered second-class citizens under the law. In an egalitarian utopia, skin color should be meaningless and people should be able to associate with anybody they choose, regardless of their race. And yet, in Noah's world, during South Africa during apartheid, Black people are depicted as something evil or cancerous, as harmful as chocolate can be to someone's diet and self-discipline. The path that apartheid prescribes is to avoid the "chocolate," to remain untainted enough to one day be considered White. The coarseness of this metaphor only underscores the level of backwards indoctrination that apartheid sought to achieve.
As an introduction to a more detailed account of his time in Eden Park, a suburban colored neighborhood in Johannesburg, Noah teaches the reader about the origins of South Africa's "colored" (mixed-race) population. With metaphorical language and a humorous allusion, Noah details this population's struggles:
Colored people had it rough. Imagine: You’ve been brainwashed into believing that your blood is tainted. You’ve spent all your time assimilating and aspiring to whiteness. Then, just as you think you’re closing in on the finish line, some fucking guy named Nelson Mandela comes along and flips the country on its head. Now the finish line is back where the starting line was, and the benchmark is black. Black is in charge. Black is beautiful. Black is powerful. For centuries colored people were told: Blacks are monkeys. Don’t swing from the trees like them. Learn to walk upright like the white man. Then all of a sudden it’s Planet of the Apes, and the monkeys have taken over.
This passage not only outlines the labors of colored people throughout South Africa's history, but also Noah's own struggle in being perceived as a colored person without sharing the cultural traditions and knowledge of the people. According to Noah, South African society during apartheid was a race or, more accurately, a spectrum of winners crossing the finish line and stragglers in the back of the pack. Colored people are somewhere in the middle, still running the race strong but never being close enough or fast enough to reach the White finish line. Then, with another metaphor of Mandela "flip[ping] the country on its head," Noah illustrates the struggles of colored people as a cruel and childish game of Keep Away.
Following that metaphor, Noah evaluates and exaggerates the perception of Mandela's achievements, comparing the outcome to the popular movie Planet of the Apes. Though this comparison is an allusion to popular culture and serves to engage the reader, it is also highly degrading. With this allusion, Noah takes the degrading term "monkey"—which has been used as a racist epithet toward Black people throughout history—and flips the term on its head. White people can degrade them, but they cannot deny that Black people are newly in charge.
In the preface to Chapter 13, Noah depicts the incredible lengths that White neighborhoods went to protect themselves and ultimately separate themselves from Black and "colored" (mixed-race) people. With an ironic metaphor and a simile, Noah describes his personal struggle with these supposed safeguards:
The white neighborhoods of Johannesburg were built on white fear—fear of black crime, fear of black uprisings and reprisals—and as a result virtually every house sits behind a six-foot wall, and on top of that wall is electric wire. Everyone lives in a plush, fancy maximum-security prison.[…] I’d hear people laughing and playing and I’d get off my bike and creep up and peek over the wall and see a bunch of white kids splashing around in someone’s swimming pool. I was like a Peeping Tom, but for friendship.
Once again, Noah uses comparison as a method of mutual understanding—a bridge between the radical and the unchanging, between the ideals of the free world and the world still stuck in the past. The metaphor comparing White people's homes to prisons highlights these dichotomous principles. The device helps the reader to understand, in their own vocabulary, how completely isolated each racial group was during apartheid. And yet, there is situational irony in how the White neighborhoods are so afraid—White fear, as Noah calls it—of Black crime that they put themselves in "plush, fancy maximum-security prison[s]." The irony lies in being so afraid of a possible crime or uprising that the White people imprison themselves. In this way, the so-called criminals are running free, controlling the lawful through instilled fear.
While the topics of White fear and segregated communities are sobering, Noah manages to insert some humor into the situation by comparing himself to a Peeping Tom. Despite the implications and danger, Noah is just a boy in need of a friend, peeking into people's prison yards to see if anyone wants to play with him. This downplay of seriousness through humor is a trademark of the book. Noah's memoir poses the following questions: How did children growing up during apartheid view themselves and the problems at hand? What was their perspective and how did they overcome the challenges they faced? Noah tackles these questions with not only a comedian's touch but with the levity of a child's perspective.
As Abel drinks and wastes away, Patricia becomes the family breadwinner and foots the bills. With a metaphor, Noah compares Abel, in his jealous anger, to a dragon coming out of hiding:
He was supposed to pay for Andrew’s school fees and groceries, but he started falling behind even on that, and soon my mom was paying for everything. She paid the electricity. She paid the mortgage. He literally contributed nothing. That was the turning point. When my mother started making more money and getting her independence back—that’s when we saw the dragon emerge. The drinking got worse. He grew more and more violent. It wasn’t long after coming for me in the pantry that Abel hit my mom for the second time.
This dragon metaphor paints an image of terror and impending danger. In the reader's mind, the metaphor frames Abel as a person capable of violence, as someone who has a dormant dark side waiting in the shadows to reveal itself. Abel only emerges as the dragon when Patricia begins to outshine him, regaining her financial and intrinsic independence. Though dragons are typically known to be protective, Abel's treatment of Patricia is more repressive. When she shows sign of flying the coup, he reacts poorly, falling back on physical abuse to further repress her and quash any thoughts of independence.