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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
Part 1, Prologue
Explanation and Analysis—Stepfather :
In the Prologue, Cervantes uses an extended metaphor that describes the novel as his own stepchild:
It can happen that a man has an ugly, charmless son, and his love blindfolds him to prevent him from seeing the child’s defects: on the contrary, he regards them as gifts and graces, and describes them to his friends as examples of wit and cleverness. But although I seem like Don Quixote’s father, I am his stepfather, and I don’t want to drift with the current of custom, or beg you [..] to forgive or excuse the defects that you see in this my son; and you are neither his relative nor his friend [...]
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Part 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Tree Without Leaves:
The narrator uses a series of metaphors when describing Don Quixote’s desire to “find a lady of whom he could be enamoured”:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[He] realized that the only remaining task was to find a lady of whom he could be enamoured; for a knight errant without a lady-love is a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul. He said to himself: ‘If, for my wicked sins or my good fortune, I encounter some giant, as knights errant usually do, and I dash him down in single combat, or cleave him asunder, or, in short, defeat and vanquish him, will it not be proper to have someone to whom I can send him as a tribute.'
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Part 1, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Like Heretics:
After Don Quixote, injured and exhausted, returns from his first attempt to seek adventure, his family and loved ones gather together in his home to care for him and find a solution to his apparent “madness.” After agreeing that his books have had a negative effect on his mental health, they decide to burn them. Don Quixote’s niece uses a simile that compares the books to “heretics” and the priest, following from her rhetoric, uses a series of metaphors drawn from religion and law:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘I’m the one to blame for it all, not telling you gentlemen about my uncle’s madness so you could have done something about it and burned those unchristian books of his before it came to all this; he’s got lots and lots of them, and they do deserve to be put to the flames, like heretics.’
‘I agree with that,’ said the priest, ‘and I swear that before another day has passed they’ll be put on public trial and condemned to the flames so that they can’t make anyone reading them do what my friend must have done.’
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Part 1, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Books on Trial:
Cervantes uses an extended metaphor and numerous allusions in a comic scene in which the members of Don Quixote’s household put the books of his library on trial, condemning many of them to the flames in order to weaken their influence on him. In one passage, they examine The Four Books of Amadis of Gaul after Don Quixote’s niece recommends burning all of the books without further examination:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The housekeeper said much the same, so anxious were both women to see those innocents massacred, but the priest wouldn’t agree without at least reading the titles. The first one that Master Nicolás put into his hands was The Four Books of Amadis of Gaul, and the priest said: ‘This is a strange coincidence: I’ve heard that this was the very first chivalry romance to be printed in Spain [...] so it seems to me that, as the prophet of such a pernicious sect, it should be condemned to the flames without delay.’
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Explanation and Analysis—Incurable Disease:
After the priest recommends that they spare Don Quixote’s poetry books, noting that they are far more intellectual and therefore less damaging than his books of chivalric literature, Don Quixote’s niece uses a metaphor that compares interest in poetry to an “incurable disease” in her argument to add the poetry books to the bonfire:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘Oh sir,’ cried the niece, ‘please have them burned like the rest, because it could well happen that once my uncle gets over his chivalry illness he starts reading all these other books and takes it into his head to become a shepherd and wander about the forests and meadows singing and playing music and, what would be even worse than that, turn into a poet, which they say is a catching and incurable disease.’
‘The girl’s right,’ said the priest, ‘and it’ll be a good idea to remove this dangerous stumbling-block from our friend’s way.'
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Part 1, Chapter 33
Explanation and Analysis—A Chaste Woman:
After rejecting his friend Anselmo’s plan to test his wife’s virtue, Lotario uses a series of similes and metaphors to describe female virtue:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The pure, chaste woman is an ermine, and the virtue of chastity is whiter and purer than snow, and the man who wants her not to lose it, but on the contrary to keep and preserve it, shouldn’t do as huntsmen do with ermine [...] A good woman is also like a mirror of clear, shining glass, but any breath that touches this mirror will cloud and dim it. She should be treated like a holy relic, adored but not touched. She should be guarded and prized like a beautiful garden full of roses and other flowers [...]
Part 2, Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Soil and Manure :
After Don Quixote praises Sancho Panza for an “affected” speech in which he describes life using an elaborate metaphor regarding chess, Panza uses a series of agricultural metaphors to describe Quixote’s influence on him:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Soil that left to itself would be poor and sterile gives good yields when you manure it and you till it. What I’m trying to say is that being with you is the manure that’s been spread over the barren soil of my poor wits, and the tilling is all this time I’ve been with you, serving you, so I’m hoping to give wonderful yields that won’t be unworthy to be piled up beside the paths of good breeding that you’ve trodden over this feeble understanding of mine.
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Explanation and Analysis—Life as Theatre:
After Don Quixote almost starts a fight with a troupe of actors, whose loud bells frighten Rocinante, he speaks to Sancho Panza and uses an elaborate and conventional metaphor that compares life to theatre:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘Have you ever seen a play that includes kings, emperors, and popes [...]? One actor plays the pimp, another plays the liar [...] but once the play is over and they remove their costumes, all the players are equals.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen a play like that,’ Sancho replied.
‘Well, the same happens,’ said Don Quixote, ‘in the play of this life, in which some act as emperors, others as popes and, in short, all the characters that there can be in a play; but when it is over, in other words when life ends, death strips them all of the costumes [...]’
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