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Imagery
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 This Side of Paradise
Book 1, Chapter 2: Spires and Gargoyles
Explanation and Analysis—The Dreaming College:
In Book 1, Chapter 2, Amory immerses himself in his new life as a Princeton student. It is immediately clear to the reader that the school has an enormous hold on Amory, and Fitzgerald uses personification and metaphor to show how Amory conceives of the school and his place within it:
The college dreamed on—awake. He felt a nervous excitement that might have been the very throb of its slow heart. It was a stream where he was to throw a stone whose faint ripple would be vanishing almost as it left his hand. As yet he had given nothing, he had taken nothing.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 3: The Egotist Considers
Explanation and Analysis—Decorating the Personage:
In Book 1, Chapter 3, Monsignor Darcy shares his wisdom with Amory. Monsignor uses an extended metaphor to explain the distinction he feels between the concepts of "personality" and "personage"—and why a person ought to cultivate the latter rather than the former:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he's done. He's a bar on which a thousand things have been hung—glittering things sometimes, as ours are; but he uses those things with a cold mentality back of them.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Weathering the Morning:
In Book 1, Chapter 3, Amory has a startling run-in with his deceased friend, Dick Humbird, who appears to be stalking him in a horrifying and hallucinogenic end to an uncomfortable night out in New York. The morning after, Amory's memory of the nightmarish sequence comes back slowly, delayed by the beauty of the morning. Fitzgerald uses a metaphor to illuminate the day:
Unlock with LitCharts A+If the morning had been cold and grey he could have grasped the reins of the past in an instant, but it was one of those days that New York gets sometimes in May, when the air on Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine.
Explanation and Analysis—Mind on Fire:
In Book 1, Chapter 3, Amory has a startling lapse in his cool, calculating demeanor as his sanity appears to waver on a night out with his friends in New York. In the sequence that follows, Fitzgerald uses a host of literary devices—including imagery, metaphor, and simile—to detail Amory's hallucinogenic feeling of horror:
Unlock with LitCharts A+There was a minute while temptation crept over him like a warm wind, and his imagination turned to fire, and he took the glass from Phoebe's hand.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Celestial Personalities:
In Book 1, Chapter 3, the illustrious Monsignor Darcy tries to give Amory some much-needed advice. In doing so, he uses a luminous metaphor to put Amory's growing pains in the perspective of the long arc of an entire human life:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] and don't worry about losing your "personality," as you persist in calling it; at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4pm.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 4: Narcissus Off Duty
Explanation and Analysis—Importantly Earnest:
In Book 1, Chapter 4, Amory's cynicism begins to waver. As he hears from Burne Holiday about the movement against Princeton's eating clubs, Fitzgerald uses a metaphor to illustrate Amory's newfound appreciation for Burne's sincerity:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Amory was struck by Burne's intense earnestness, a quality he was accustomed to associate only with the dread stupidity, and by the great enthusiasm that struck dead chords in his heart. Burne stood vaguely for a land Amory hoped he was drifting toward—and it was almost time that land was in sight.
Related Themes:
