Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment: Metaphors 2 key examples

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

Key Examples in Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment

Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—The Nucleus:

Hawthorne uses a striking scientific metaphor in describing Dr. Heidegger's eccentric nature as the "nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories": 

Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to my own veracious self; and if any passages of the present tale should startle the reader’s faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a fiction monger.

Explanation and Analysis—A Brood of Pains:

Hawthorne uses a striking metaphor in his outline of Colonel Killigrew's regret-filled life. 

Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body.

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