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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
Chapter 1. The Madness Years
Explanation and Analysis—Trophy:
In Chapter 1, Liu describes a bloody standoff between members of warring revolutionary factions, many of whom are remarkably young for the amount of daily violence they experience. During this standoff, Red Union warriors shoot a 15-year-old girl and celebrate her death, rushing to claim the body from the ground and use it as a piece of propaganda. Liu uses metaphor to characterize the scene:
The Red Union warriors shouted in joy. A few rushed to the foot of the building, tore away the battle banner of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade, and seized the slender, lifeless body. They raised their trophy overhead and flaunted it for a while before tossing it toward the top of the metal gate of the compound.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Flames:
Throughout The Three-Body Problem, the narrator frequently describes student revolutionaries as "flames" or "fire," using both similes and metaphors to establish this motif. Note the following simile from Chapter 1, which is used to describe the militants who eventually kill Ye Zhetai:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Dressed in military uniforms and equipped with bandoliers, they exuded youthful vigor and surrounded Ye Zhetai like four green flames.
Related Themes:
Chapter 2. Silent Spring
Explanation and Analysis—Father Tree:
Chapter 2 of The Three-Body Problem begins with an account of the government's deforestation efforts, of which Ye Wenjie is unwillingly part. Forced to do manual labor, Ye's mind naturally wanders, fixing on her trauma with nothing else to distract her. She uses a metaphor to contextualize her trauma within her current physical work:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She picked up her ax and saw and began to clear the branches from the trunk. Every time she did this, she felt as though she were cleaning the corpse of a giant. Sometimes she even imagined the giant was her father. The feelings from that terrible night two years ago when she cleaned her father’s body in the mortuary would resurface, and the splits and cracks in the larch bark seemed to turn into the old scars and new wounds covering her father.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Flames:
Throughout The Three-Body Problem, the narrator frequently describes student revolutionaries as "flames" or "fire," using both similes and metaphors to establish this motif. Note the following simile from Chapter 1, which is used to describe the militants who eventually kill Ye Zhetai:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Dressed in military uniforms and equipped with bandoliers, they exuded youthful vigor and surrounded Ye Zhetai like four green flames.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6. The Shooter and the Farmer
Explanation and Analysis—Cancer Cells:
In Chapter 6, the narrator discusses Pan Han's scientific ideology, which is ultimately degenerative. The biologist believes that technology regresses society, pushing it to grow beyond its means. The narrator uses a metaphor to compare this growth to that of a cancer cell:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Pan] believed that technological progress was a disease in human society. The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body.
Related Themes:
Chapter 7. Three Body: King Wen of Zhou and the Long Night
Explanation and Analysis—Bottomless Abyss:
In Chapter 7, Wang attempts to characterize his interactions with Shen Yufei, a woman who appears as a blank slate to him—emotionally void, impenetrable. He uses a metaphor for this comparison:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Wang subconsciously thought of her as the long-obsolete DOS operating system: a blank, black screen, a bare “C:\>” prompt, a blinking cursor. Whatever you entered, it echoed back. Not one extra letter and not a single change. But now he knew that behind the “C:\>” was a bottomless abyss.
