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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
Book 1
Explanation and Analysis—Like Fire:
As they walk the streets of Chicago, Bigger probingly asks Gus where the white folks live. Gus points "across the 'line'; over there on Cottage Grove Avenue." Bigger corrects him:
"Right down here in my stomach."
Gus looked at Bigger searchingly, then away, as though ashamed.
"Yeah; I know what you mean," he whispered.
"Every time I think of 'em, I feel 'em," Bigger said.
"Yeah; and in your chest and throat, too," Gus said.
'It's like fire.'
'And sometimes you can't hardly breathe....'
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Book 2
Explanation and Analysis—Ravel in the White:
Near the end of Book 2, Bigger, having raped Bessie in the abandoned house, now takes measure of her sleeping breath. He pays attention to it for some time: in his sleepless, murderous, lustful delirium, he gets caught up in it and imagines it in several different ways. It culminates with a final metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He saw her breath as a white thread stretching out over a vast black gulf and felt that he was clinging to it and was waiting to see if the ravel in the white thread which had started out would continue and let him drop in the rocks far below.
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Explanation and Analysis—Long, Taut:
When Bigger finally reveals to Bessie, late in Book 2, that he killed Mary, Bessie tells Bigger, through tears, the terrible fact he seemingly hadn't yet considered: "They'll ... they'll say you raped her." Bigger realizes that rape has been the story of his life so far, and he uses a metaphor to consider this idea:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Rape was what one felt when one's back was against a wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not, to keep the pack from killing one. He committed rape every time he looked into a white face. He was a long, taut piece of rubber which a thousand white hands had stretched to the snapping point, and when he snapped it was rape.
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Book 3
Explanation and Analysis—Balanced on a Hairline:
After Max and Bigger discuss their plan to plead guilty at the trial in hopes of a lesser sentence, Bigger waits alone, again, in his cell. He comes to terms at last with his situation, using metaphor in the course of doing so:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He had to make a decision: in order to walk to that chair he had to weave his feelings into a hard shield of either hope or hate. To fall between them would mean living and dying in a fog of fear.
He was balanced on a hairline now, but there was no one to push him forward or backward, no one to make him feel that he had any value or worth—no one but himself.
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Explanation and Analysis—Bigger Adversary:
After Bigger has been sentenced to die late in Book 3, he lies in a depressed daze in his prison cell, coming to terms with his fate. He realizes that his life—his entire life, he knows now—has been defined by fighting against systems of control. He describes this using the last of many different black-and-white metaphors in the novel:
Unlock with LitCharts A+All his life he had been most alive, most himself, when he had felt things hard enough to fight for them; and now here in this cell he felt more than ever the hard central core of what he had lived. As the white mountain had once loomed over him, so now the black wall of death loomed closer with each fleeting hour. But he could not strike out blindly now; death was a different and bigger adversary.
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