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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 5
Explanation and Analysis—Fine Structures Crack:
When Dede Antanas can’t find safe work after months of trying, the narrator makes the following comment about a change in Jurgis. The metaphor Sinclair uses depicts Jurgis's wavering faith in the basic goodness of the American people:
So, after all, there was a crack in the fine structure of Jurgis' faith in things as they are. The crack was wide while Dede Antanas was hunting a job—and it was yet wider when he finally got it. For one evening the old man came home in a great state of excitement, with the tale that he had been approached by a man in one of the corridors of the pickle rooms of Durham's, and asked what he would pay to get a job.
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Bad Weather:
Bad weather appears as a recurring motif in the novel, emphasizing the inescapable struggles faced by the poor in early-1900s America. Incredibly harsh and unpleasant seasonal changes appear throughout the book, consistently presenting challenges and adversities to Jurgis and his family. For example, in the first third of the novel, the narrator says that:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Grisly Thing:
In this excerpt from Chapter 7, Sinclair uses personification and metaphor to depict the cold as an antagonistic force. The cold takes on a character of its own and is personified, which Sinclair adds to by employing metaphors of hell, chaos, and torture:
Unlock with LitCharts A+They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. It was cruel, iron-hard; and hour after hour they would cringe in its grasp, alone, alone.
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Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Bad Weather:
Bad weather appears as a recurring motif in the novel, emphasizing the inescapable struggles faced by the poor in early-1900s America. Incredibly harsh and unpleasant seasonal changes appear throughout the book, consistently presenting challenges and adversities to Jurgis and his family. For example, in the first third of the novel, the narrator says that:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches.
Related Themes:
Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Bitter Food and Drink:
In this passage, Jurgis's accidental workplace injury leaves him unable to walk, endangering his family's finances. Sinclair uses a metaphor that likens Jurgis’s bitterness to eating in order to describe his misery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help, should have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the daily food and drink of Jurgis.
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Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Noah's Ark of Crime:
In this passage, the author employs an allusion to Noah's Ark that also serves as a metaphor, depicting the horrific conditions and diverse population of the Chicago jail where Jurgis is imprisoned:
Unlock with LitCharts A+This jail was a Noah's ark of the city's crime—there were murderers, 'hold-up men' and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters and forgers, bigamists, 'shoplifters,' 'confidence men,' petty thieves and pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers, beggars, tramps and drunkards; they were black and white, old and young, Americans and natives of every nation under the sun. There were hardened criminals and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and boys literally not yet in their teens. They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to.
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