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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
Book 1: The Perforated Sheet
Explanation and Analysis—Handcuffed:
At the beginning of the novel, Saleem Sinai uses metaphor to connect India's independence to his own birth:
At the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. [. . .] Thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly saluting clocks I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country.
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Book 1: Hit-the-Spittoon
Explanation and Analysis—Domestic Self-Defense:
In Book 1, Section 3—Hit-the-Spittoon, Saleem describes Naseem's active resistance to Aadam Aziz, including his values, decisions, and choice to practice Islam less conservatively. Saleem uses an implied metaphor to compare this opposition to modernism to a war. Naseem has been "driven to the barricades" by her husband:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was perhaps the obligation of facial nudity, coupled with Aziz’s constant requests for her to move beneath him, that had driven her to the barricades; and the domestic rules she established were a system of self-defense so impregnable that Aziz, after many fruitless attempts, had more or less given up trying to storm her many ravelins and bastions, leaving her, like a large smug spider, to rule her chosen domain.
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Explanation and Analysis—Preserving:
In the following excerpt, Saleem breaks away from the central narrative to ramble about the relationship between pickling and storytelling. Through metaphor, Saleem compares the two actions:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings—by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks.
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Explanation and Analysis—Naseem the Basilisk:
Saleem uses metaphor to describe an encounter between the Rani and Naseem that took place during Naseem's feud with her husband, Aadam. In defiance of her husband's values and the decisions he makes on behalf of the household, Naseem refuses to feed Aadam, and he refuses to eat. In desperation, the Rani sends emissaries speak with Naseem, hoping to convince her to stop starving Aadam. Saleem metaphorically compares Naseem's behavior during this encounter to that of a basilisk:
Unlock with LitCharts A+'India isn’t full of enough starving people?’ the emissaries asked Naseem, and she unleashed a basilisk glare which was already becoming legend. [. . .] She pierced her visitors with lidless eyes and stared them down. Their voices turned to stone; their hearts froze; and alone in a room with strange men, my grandmother sat in triumph, surrounded by downcast eyes.
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Book 1: Under the Carpet
Explanation and Analysis—Family History:
In Book 1, Section 4—Under the Carpet, Saleem outlines his rationale for discussing his family's complex problems and secrets without excluding information. He frames this endeavor as a push toward truth in storytelling, revealing details that some might consider illicit or "unspeakable." He explores this act of revelation and truth-telling through metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Family history, of course, has its proper dietary laws. One is supposed to swallow and digest only the permitted parts of it, the halal portions of the past, drained of their redness, their blood. Unfortunately, this makes the stories less juicy; so I am about to become the first and only member of my family to flout the laws of halal. Letting no blood escape from the body of the tale, I arrive at the unspeakable part; and, undaunted, press on.
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Book 1: A Public Announcement
Explanation and Analysis—Public Announcement:
Saleem uses metaphor to describe his presence as the narrator in the story, flying high above the events taking place and foreshadowing those to come:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It’s almost time for the public announcement. I won’t deny I’m excited: I’ve been hanging around in the background of my own story for too long, and although it’s still a little while before I can take over, it’s nice to get a look in. So, with a sense of high expectation, I follow the pointing finger in the sky and look down upon my parents’ neighborhood [. . .] all of it foreshortened by my high-in-the-sky point of view.
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Explanation and Analysis—Public Monster:
Saleem uses metaphor to describe Mr. Kemal's shady sense of business ethics:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In the godown, roll upon roll of leathercloth; and the commodities dealt in by Mr. Kemal, rice tea lentils—he hoards them all over the country in vast quantities, as a form of protection against the many-headed many-mouthed rapacious monster that is the public, which, if given its heads, would force prices so low in a time of abundance that godfearing entrepreneurs would starve while the monster grew fat . . .
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Explanation and Analysis—Father and Son:
Saleem uses metaphor to describe the intergenerational effects of his father's actions, cowardices, and limitations:
Unlock with LitCharts A+His inability to follow his own nose dripped into me, to some extent clouding the nasal inheritance I received from other places, and making me, for year after year, incapable of sniffing out the true road . . .
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Explanation and Analysis—The Perforated Sheet:
Saleem uses metaphor to describe the process by which Amina Sinai convinced herself to fall in love with his father, Ahmed Sinai:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Bringing her gift of assiduity to bear, [Amina] began to train herself to love [Ahmed]. To do this she divided him, mentally, into every single one of his component parts, physical as well as behavioral, compartmentalizing him into lips and verbal tics and likes . . . in short, she fell under the spell of the perforated sheet of her own parents, because she resolved to fall in love with her husband bit by bit.
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Book 1: Methwold
Explanation and Analysis—Saleem as a Fetus:
Saleem uses extended metaphor to compare his own gestational period as a fetus to the writing process:
Unlock with LitCharts A+By the time the rains came at the end of June, the fetus was fully formed inside her womb. Knees and nose were present; and as many heads as would grow were already in position. What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book—perhaps an encyclopedia—even a whole language …
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