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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 1
Explanation and Analysis—Sketching a Fresh Start:
When Marcher encounters May in Chapter 1, he can barely remember their first meeting in Naples 10 years prior. Wishing for some kind of romantic or critical rapport with May, he imagines a "sketch of a fresh start" with her:
He would have liked to invent something, get her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or critical kind had originally occurred. He was really almost reaching out in imagination—as against time—for something that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn’t come this sketch of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Buried Treasure:
In Chapter 2, Marcher uses the metaphor of buried treasure to describe his sudden good fortune in rediscovering through May his own feelings about fate:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] for our gentleman this was marked, quite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just the buried treasure of her knowledge. He had with his own hands dug up this little hoard, brought to light—that is to within reach of the dim day constituted by their discretions and privacies—the object of value the hiding-place of which he had, after putting it into the ground himself, so strangely, so long forgotten.
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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Cherished Blindness:
Throughout the story, John Marcher maintains a singular focus on awaiting his fate. However, when he discovers that his fate has been to wait for nothing, he begins to think of his own passive stupidity in terms of metaphorical blindness. In Chapter 6, the narrator says:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The name on the table smote him as the passage of his neighbour had done, and what it said to him, full in the face, was that she was what he had missed. This was the awful thought, the answer to all the past, the vision at the dread clearness of which he turned as cold as the stone beneath him. Everything fell together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished.
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