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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
Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Noah's Ark:
In St. Deborah by the Water, The Prophet explains to the Symphony’s former audience that the Georgia Flu was sent as a religious judgment on those who died. Mandel uses allusion and metaphor to frame the Prophet’s ideology and to connect the Georgia Flu to the biblical story of the flood:
"The flu," the prophet said, "the great cleansing that we suffered twenty years ago, that flu was our flood. The light we carry within us is the ark that carried Noah and his people over the face of the terrible waters, and I submit that we were saved"—his voice was rising—"not only to bring the light, to spread the light, but to be the light. We were saved because we are the light. We are the pure."
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Chapter 23
Explanation and Analysis—Blur the Years:
In this passage, the members of the Symphony are sitting together and thinking about their long tenure as a traveling company. The Symphony’s conductor—and then Mandel's narrator—both use metaphors to explore the weight of shared experience:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“We have traveled so far together,” the conductor said. There are certain qualities of light that blur the years. Sometimes when Kirsten and August were on watch together at dawn, she would glance at him as the sun rose [...]
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Explanation and Analysis—The Light:
Kirsten worriedly repeats an alarming section of the Prophet’s “light and darkness” sermon to August, trying to figure out what this moral imperative implies. As she does so, she uses hyperbole and metaphor to explore the dangerous consequences of seeing the world in these absolute terms:
Unlock with LitCharts A+"If you are the light,” she said, “then your enemies are darkness, right?” [...] If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify. There’s nothing you can’t survive, because there’s nothing that you will not do."
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Explanation and Analysis—Starship Suspended:
After a member of the Symphony goes missing in the woods, Kirsten finds a note from August in her pocket with a poem written on it, and she is so moved she almost cries:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Late in the day, she found a folded piece of paper in her pocket. She recognized August’s handwriting.
A fragment for my friend—
If your soul left this earth
I would follow and find you
Silent, my starship suspended in night.
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Chapter 26
Explanation and Analysis—Full of Ghosts:
As Dahlia talks to Arthur about how horribly wrong she feels the world has gone, she uses a metaphor to describe how haunted it feels to her. Dahlia’s disillusionment with adulthood and professional life is overwhelming, despite the fact that the pandemic is yet to come:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But anyway, I look around sometimes and I think—this will maybe sound weird—it's like the corporate world's full of ghosts. And actually, let me revise that, my parents are in academia so I've had front row seats for that horror show, I know academia's no different, so maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts.
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Chapter 36
Explanation and Analysis—Soul Unwinding:
After his brother Frank dies by suicide, Jeevan walks away from the city and their apartment into the freezing outside world. The line between narrator and character blurs via a metaphor, as Mandel connects Jeevan’s internal state to the unraveling world around him:
Unlock with LitCharts A+This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air. Finally whispering the same two words over and over: “Keep walking. Keep walking. Keep walking.” He looked up and met the eyes of an owl, watching him from a snow-laden branch.
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