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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
Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—A Cracked Cup:
After convincing herself to read the letter that mysteriously made its way into her home, Mrs. Drover tries to be practical, attempting to go about her business without worrying too much. But as she attempts to gather the things she originally came to get, she can't help but feel daunted by the surrounding house, which feels so empty and eerie that she has to stop and take stock of her surroundings. As she does so, the narrative uses a metaphor to characterize the home itself:
The desuetude of her former bedroom, her married London home’s whole air of being a cracked cup from which memory, with its reassuring power, had either evaporated or leaked away, made a crisis—and at just this crisis the letter-writer had, knowledgeably, struck.
The bedroom's feeling of disuse (its "desuetude") unnerves Mrs. Drover, prompting her to consider the entire home, which the narrative metaphorically describes as a "cracked cup from which memory [...] had evaporated or leaked away." This evokes a feeling of ephemerality, as if Mrs. Drover can't quite hold on to even her own memories, which are metaphorically characterized as a kind of liquid. The word "evaporated" is therefore particularly strange in this context, complicating the metaphor. After all, it would make sense for something to "leak" out of a cracked cup, but for a liquid to "evaporate" out of a cracked cup would imply that it somehow remained in the cup even after the cup was cracked: only after remaining in this broken cup for a long time would the liquid "evaporate," gradually disappearing.
It's almost as if Mrs. Drover's home is "cracked" because of the bombings—and, of course, because of the presence of the mysterious letter. And now that the home has been cracked, a seal of sorts has been broken, exposing the memories contained in the house and causing them to "evaporate"—it's not a perfect metaphor, but its complexity calls attention to Mrs. Drover's strange feeling that she can't quite grasp her own memories. Now that her comfortable and "reassuring" domestic situation has been compromised, she is so unsettled that her happy memories of her "married London" life no longer feel tangible.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Smoking with Dark:
After spotting the mysterious letter on the hall table, Mrs. Drover pauses. She doesn't rush over and tear it open—she stands there thinking about how it got there, wondering if perhaps the caretaker returned to the house earlier than she thought. When she finally goes to pick up the letter, she still doesn't open it, instead taking it upstairs and not even looking at it until she goes to the window in her bedroom. As she continues to stall, the narrative uses a metaphor of sorts to describe the view beneath the window:
The room looked over the garden and other gardens: the sun had gone in; as the clouds sharpened and lowered, the trees and rank lawns seemed already to smoke with dark.
The assertion that the trees and lawns "seemed already to smoke with dark" is highly figurative, functioning as a strange kind of metaphor. The figuration is tempered by the word "seemed," but the overall image still operates metaphorically, as the trees and lawns are presented as doing something quite unnatural—smoking "with dark," as if the darkness itself is curling up toward Mrs. Drover.
The word "already" bears odd connotations, too, implying that the lawns will inevitably "smoke with dark" at some point and that they just happen to be doing so earlier than expected. This speaks to the strange, unsettling world that the story has built thus far—a world in which something sinister or uncanny is bound to happen eventually. Of course, nothing remarkable has happened yet; Mrs. Drover has simply picked up a letter. And yet, the entire atmosphere is "already" foreboding and disorienting, a feeling conveyed by the image of smoky darkness materializing from otherwise ordinary surroundings.
Related Themes:
