After Steavens arrives at the Merricks’ house with Harvey’s body, the Merrick family leaves Steavens and Jim alone in the living room together. Struck by the unrefined countenance of the Merricks and Jim alike, Steavens uses a pair of metaphors to compare the town of Sand City to unprocessed clay and Harvey to a “porcelain vessel,” as seen in the following passage:
Steavens, sitting by the window, watched [Jim] turn down the glaring lamp, still its jangling pendants with an angry gesture, and then stand with his hands locked behind him, staring down into the master’s face. He could not help wondering what link there had been between the porcelain vessel and so sooty a lump of potter’s clay.
By metaphorically comparing Harvey to “a porcelain vessel” and the town to “so sooty a lump of potter’s clay,” Steavens expresses his surprise that a kind and sophisticated man like Harvey could have come from such a dismal and unrefined family and community. Steavens’s underlying assumption here is that people are typically reflections of the places from which they come. Cather is challenging this assumption in the story by proving that no matter how unpleasant a person’s upbringing and hometown are, they still have the ability to become their own person.
When Jim and Steavens are reminiscing about Harvey at his funeral, they metaphorically compare the artist to an oyster, as seen in the following passage:
“Was he always a good deal of an oyster?” [Jim] asked abruptly. “He was terribly shy as a boy.”
“Yes, he was an oyster, since you put it so,” rejoined Steavens. “Although he could be very fond of people, he always gave one the impression of being detached. He disliked violent emotion; he was reflective, and rather distrustful of himself—except, of course, as regarded his work.”
Here, Jim asks Steavens if, later in life, Harvey was still “an oyster,” or, as he puts it, “terribly shy.” This metaphor emerges from how oysters can seem closed-off because of their shells. Steavens responds to Jim by saying, yes, Harvey was an oyster, and then furthering the metaphor of oysters as shy and solitary creatures by stating that Harvey liked people but was “reflective,” “distrustful,” and “always gave one the impression of being detached.” Though neither man directly states that Harvey is also like an oyster because he contained a “pearl” or artistic genius inside of him, it’s likely that Cather intended the metaphor to extend in this direction as well.
The way Steavens describes Harvey here (especially via the language of "distrustful") makes it clear that while Harvey was able to leave Sand City when he came of age, he carried the trauma of his upbringing with him as he headed to Boston to pursue his artistic career.
