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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
Key Examples in The Longest Memory
Chapter 5: Chapel
Explanation and Analysis—Writing Hand is a Crab:
In Chapter 5, Chapel uses simile and metaphor to describe what it was like learning to write with Lydia:
Unlock with LitCharts A+My hand was a crab walking sideways / And leaving crab tracks, sideways across the page. / Then she held my hand and the tracks straightened / As if the crab walked on two feet in one line.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6: Plantation Owners
Explanation and Analysis—Lions, not Men:
In Chapter 6, Mr. Whitechapel uses a metaphorical idiom when arriving at a club filled with other Virginian plantation owners:
Unlock with LitCharts A+They are lions, not men, and you are driving into their den.
Related Themes:
Chapter 10: Lydia
Explanation and Analysis—Drape in Rags:
In Chapter 10, Lydia uses a metaphor to describe the failed metaphors made by the suitors that visit her family's plantation attempting to woe her:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Many of them are coarse in their humor and lewd in their suggestions which they try to dress in metaphor but only manage to drape in rags.
Related Themes:
Chapter 12: Great Granddaughter
Explanation and Analysis—Mouth Into a Spring:
In Chapter 12, Whitechapel's great-granddaughter has a dream of Africa that she describes with a metaphor and imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A pot on the fire in the center of the hut gives off a smell of pepper and spices that turn my mouth into a spring. Where people once stood, they sit, ready to eat. I have to swallow every few seconds to stop myself from dribbling over the contents of this pot. A steaming, heaped clay plate is thrust into my grip and I am pushed from my feet to the ground.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Knuckles Round as Stones:
In Chapter 12, Whitechapel's great-granddaughter describes his dead body with imagery, simile, and metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He lies half-curled. His skin is already cold. I start at his head, his face, neck and behind his ears; wiping the slack skin in his neck to catch a streak of water, wiping the set creases at the corners of his mouth.[...] I uncurl the fingers which have the resistance of the dead in them and wipe the palms with their pathways of an ant’s nest. His knuckles are round as stones. His nails are as dark brown as his skin.
Related Themes:
Forgetting
Explanation and Analysis—Whitechapel's Death?:
The concluding sentences of The Longest Memory include a personification of death and a metaphor describing memory:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The light going out is death’s shadow; death sitting up suddenly behind the plate-glass of the eyes. I must sit down. No, lie down. Rest these eyes, tired of trying not to see. Rest this mouth. Stop tasting the sourness there. Forget. Memory is pain trying to resurrect itself.
Related Themes:
