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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
Part 1: The Seventh Day
Explanation and Analysis—The Boulder :
As John labors over the tedious task of cleaning carpets in his home, Baldwin creates a metaphor to symbolize the inequity present within the Black American experiences he illustrates throughout Go Tell It on the Mountain:
It became in his imagination his impossible, lifelong task, his hard trial, like that of a man he had read about somewhere, whose curse it was to push a boulder up a steep hill, only to have the giant who guarded the hill roll down the boulder again—and so on, forever, throughout eternity; he was still out there, that hapless man, somewhere at the other end of the earth, pushing his boulder up the hill.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Sinner's Pit :
After Roy returns to the Harlem church after being stabbed in an altercation on the street, his family gathers for a moment filled with both physical and emotional violence. Baldwin then evokes a metaphor of a sinner's "pit" to heighten the tension between Gabriel and John, both of whom look upon Roy with horror:
Unlock with LitCharts A+His father, with the air of one forcing the sinner to look down into the pit that is to be his portion, moved away slightly so that John could see Roy’s wound.
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Part 2: The Prayers of the Saints: Gabriel’s Prayer
Explanation and Analysis—The Lion :
During a flashback to Gabriel's youth in "Part 2: The Prayers of the Saints: Gabriel's Prayer," Baldwin utilizes the metaphor of a lion to illustrate Gabriel's complex and painful feelings towards what he perceives to be his own deepest sins:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He hated the evil that lived in his body, and he feared it, as he feared and hated the lions of lust and longing that prowled the defenseless city of his mind.
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Part 3: The Threshing-Floor
Explanation and Analysis—After the Storm :
In one of Go Tell It on the Mountain's final metaphors, Baldwin utilizes the image of a storm, its temporary violence, and its cleansing power to detail John's salvation and the aftermath of his spiritual awakening:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now the storm was over. And the avenue, like any landscape that has endured a storm, lay changed under Heaven, exhausted and clean, and new. Not again, forever, could it return to the avenue it had once been. [...] Yet the houses were there, as they had been; the windows, like a thousand, blinded eyes, stared outward at the morning—at the morning that was the same for them as the mornings of John’s innocence, and the mornings before his birth.
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