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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 2, Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Hardened Vine:
In Part 2, Chapter 10, Lou and Oscar express concern that Carl is trying to marry Alexandra to take the family land; as far as they are concerned, the land should belong to them because they are the men of the family. When they accuse Alexandra of being hard on them, she retorts with a metaphor and a simile:
Hard on you? I never meant to be hard. Conditions were hard. Maybe I would never have been very soft, anyhow; but I certainly didn’t choose to be the kind of girl I was. If you take even a vine and cut it back again and again, it grows hard, like a tree.
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Part 4, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Pulling at the Chain:
In Part 4, Chapter 5, Marie learns about Amédée's illness and suddenly feels alone: she knows Emil could just as easily have gotten sick, but she can't take comfort at his side because her love for him is a secret. Marie wanders outside to get away from her house, and the narrator uses imagery to construct a metaphor describing her state of mind:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Marie stole slowly, flutteringly, along the path [...]. The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released. Marie walked on, her face lifted toward the remote, inaccessible evening star.
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Part 5, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Circle of Life:
The narrator ends the novel in Part 5, Chapter 3 with a metaphor comparing the land to a nurturing parent to Alexandra and all the generations that will follow her:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra’s into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!
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