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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
Part 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Stop the Machine:
In Part 1, Chapter 8, Sal tries to sleep, but Dean and Carlo's extended conversation on philosophy keeps him awake. Dean and Carlo metaphorically call their talking a "machine," and Sal plays with this characterization, turning it into a simile:
"Stop the machine," I said. They looked at me.
"He's been awake all this time, listening. What were you thinking, Sal?" I told them that I was thinking they were very amazing maniacs and that I had spent the whole night listening to them like a man watching the mechanism of a watch that reached clear to the top of Berthoud Pass and yet was made with the smallest works of the most delicate watch in the world.
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Part 1, Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—My American Continent:
When Sal climbs a mountain in San Francisco, toward the end of Chapter 11 of Part 1, he describes what he sees with personification, imagery, and metaphorical language.
Unlock with LitCharts A+And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhere far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded—at least that's what I thought then.
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Part 1, Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Teresa:
In Chapter 12 of Part 1, Sal describes his lover Teresa's body with similes, and he uses additional metaphorical language to characterize their time together.
Unlock with LitCharts A+In reverent and sweet little silence [Teresa] took all her clothes off and slipped her tiny body into the sheets with me. It was brown as grapes. I saw her poor belly where there was a Caesarian scar; her hips were so narrow she couldn't bear a child without getting gashed open. Her legs were like little sticks. [...] Then, two tired angels of some kind, hung-up forlornly in an LA shelf, having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together, we fell asleep and slept till late afternoon.
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Part 1, Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Reading the Landscape:
In Chapter 14 of Part 1, in addition to making another literary allusion, Sal builds a metaphor that compares staring out of his bus window to reading.
Unlock with LitCharts A+I had a book with me I stole from a Hollywood stall, "Le Grand Meaulnes" by Alain-Fournier, but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along.
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Part 2, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—To Live and Go:
In Chapter 1 of Part 2, Sal describes with personification and metaphors a changed and, according to him, more mature Dean.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Fury spat out of his eyes when he told of things he hated; great glows of joy replaced this when he suddenly got happy; every muscle twitched to live and go.
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Part 2, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Rollo Greb:
In Chapter 4 of Part 2, Sal goes to a party thrown by a man named Rollo Greb, whom he describes with an allusion and metaphorical language.
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Greb] played Verdi operas and pantomimed them in his pajamas with a great rip down the back. He didn't give a damn about anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider through the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstasy.
Part 2, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Old Bull Lee:
In Chapter 6 of Part 2, Sal travels to New Orleans with Dean and Ed Dunkel to see his old friend, Bull Lee. Sal describes Bull with a metaphor, and he also relays a literary allusion Bull makes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Bull called [his son, Ray] "the Little Beast," after W. C. Fields. Bull came driving into the yard and unrolled himself from the car bone by bone, and came over wearily, wearing glasses, felt hat, shabby suit, long, lean, strange, and laconic, saying, "Why, Sal, you finally got here; let's go in the house and have a drink."
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Part 2, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Fruitless Love:
In Chapter 8 of Part 2, Sal uses metaphorical language to describe how Marylou looks at Dean:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Marylou was watching Dean as she had watched him clear across the country and back, out of the corner of her eye—with a sullen, sad air, as though she wanted to cut off his head and hide it in her closet, an envious and rueful love of him so amazingly himself, all raging and sniffy and crazy-wayed, a smile of tender dotage but also sinister envy that frightened me about her, a love she knew would never bear fruit [...]
Part 2, Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Rebirth:
In Chapter 10 of Part 2, Sal is lonely and delirious with hunger. While roaming the streets, he has a transcendental experience that he describes with similes.
Unlock with LitCharts A+I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times [...] I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein [...]
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Part 3, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Evil Angel:
In the second chapter of Part 3, Sal goes to Dean's house. Sal metaphorically describes himself as an angel, come to spirit Dean away on an adventure.
Unlock with LitCharts A+My arrival was somewhat like the coming of the strange most evil angel in the home of the snow-white fleece, as Dean and I began talking excitedly in the kitchen downstairs, which brought forth sobs from upstairs. [...] Camille knew what was going to happen. Apparently Dean had been quiet for a few months; now the angel had arrived and he was going mad again.
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Part 3, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Jazz:
In Chapter 4 of Part 3, Sal and Dean go to a jazz club. Kerouac's descriptions of jazz music are remarkably inventive, and this one is no exception. He uses similes and imagery to help the reader imagine the noise and energy of the crowd.
Unlock with LitCharts A+His tone was clear as a bell, high, pure, and blew straight in our faces from two feet away. Dean stood in front of him, oblivious to everything else in the world, with his head bowed, his hands socking in together, his whole body jumping on his heels and the sweat, always the sweat, pouring and splashing down his tormented collar to lie actually in a pool at his feet.
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Part 3, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Jazz:
In Chapter 4 of Part 3, Sal and Dean go to a jazz club. Kerouac's descriptions of jazz music are remarkably inventive, and this one is no exception. He uses similes and imagery to help the reader imagine the noise and energy of the crowd.
Unlock with LitCharts A+His tone was clear as a bell, high, pure, and blew straight in our faces from two feet away. Dean stood in front of him, oblivious to everything else in the world, with his head bowed, his hands socking in together, his whole body jumping on his heels and the sweat, always the sweat, pouring and splashing down his tormented collar to lie actually in a pool at his feet.
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Part 4, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Long Red Dusk:
In Chapter 1 of Part 4, Dean shows Sal a picture of Camille, then takes out more photos. These pictures send Sal into a reverie about the way people in the future will interpret the photos of his present. With metaphors and personification, Sal describes his reflections, first on the photographs, then upon Dean's departure.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, or actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. [...] Dean walked off into the long red dusk. Locomotives smoked and reeled above him. His shadow followed him, it aped his walk and thoughts and very being.
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Part 4, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Moon:
In Chapter 4 of Part 4, Sal describes another road trip with Dean and Stan. The three men are headed to Mexico, which means they must drive through Texas. Sal describes the sights of their drive with imagery and personification.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Across the immense plain of night lay the first Texas town, Dallhart, which I'd crossed in 1947. It lay glimmering on the dark floor of the earth, fifty miles away. The land by moonlight was all mesquite and wastes. On the horizon was the moon. She fattened, she grew huge and rusty, she mellowed and rolled, till the morning star contended and dews began to blow in our windows—and still we rolled.
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Part 4, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Monterrey:
Dean, Sal, and Stan keep driving through Mexico. In Chapter 5 of Part 4, they reach Monterrey. Sal describes this leg of the journey with imagery and a simile.
Unlock with LitCharts A+We met nobody on this high road. It wound among the clouds and took us to the great plateau on top. Across this plateau the big manufacturing town of Monterrey sent smoke to the blue skies with their enormous Gulf clouds written across the bowl of day like fleece.
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