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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 10
Explanation and Analysis—Prowling Beast:
When Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights after several years away, he begins visiting the Lintons at Thrushcross Grange. Nelly compares Heathcliff to a beast prowling between the Heights and the Grange:
His visits were a continual nightmare to me [...] His abode at the Heights was an oppression past explaining. I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy.
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Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Crooked Trees:
At Hindley's funeral, Heathcliff cruelly tells Hindley's young son Hareton that he's now going to mistreat the orphaned boy, just as Hindley mistreated Heathcliff after Mr. Earnshaw died. Heathcliff uses the metaphor of a crooked tree to describe his plans:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] he had the hypocrisy to represent a mourner; and previous to following with Hareton, he lifted the unfortunate child on to the table and muttered, with peculiar gusto, ‘Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!’
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Explanation and Analysis—Hindley vs. Edgar:
Nelly wonders aloud why Edgar Linton and Hindley Earnshaw—both loving husbands and fathers initially—took such different paths in life, presenting them as foils for each other.
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] Hindley, with apparently the stronger head, has shown himself sadly the worse and the weaker man. When his ship struck, the captain abandoned his post; and the crew, instead of trying to save her, rushed into riot, and confusion, leaving no hope for their luckless vessel. Linton, on the contrary, displayed the true courage of a loyal and faithful soul: he trusted God; and God comforted him. One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their own lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them.
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Chapter 18
Explanation and Analysis—Weeds vs. Crops:
When Cathy Linton meets her cousin Hareton for the first time, she's horrified to think she could be related to such a rough young man who's clearly not a gentleman. But, using an agricultural metaphor, Nelly reflects that Hareton, for all his lack of cultivation, still has the makings of a gentleman.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Still, I thought I could detect in his physiognomy a mind owning better qualities than his father ever possessed. Good things lost amid a wilderness of weeds, to be sure, whose rankness far over-topped their neglected growth; yet notwithstanding, evidence of a wealthy soil that might yield luxuriant crops, under other and favourable circumstances.
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Chapter 21
Explanation and Analysis—Young Cathy:
Nelly reflects on Cathy's 16th birthday, when she and Cathy were out walking on the moors. She uses imagery conveying youth, promise, joy, and goodness:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She bounded before me, and returned to my side, and was off again like a young greyhound; and, at first, I found plenty of entertainment in listening to the larks singing far and near; and enjoying the sweet, warm sunshine; and watching her, my pet, and my delight, with her golden ringlets flying loose behind, and her bright cheek, as soft and pure in its bloom as a wild rose, and her eyes radiant with cloudless pleasure. She was a happy creature, and an angel, in those days. It’s a pity she could not be content.
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Explanation and Analysis—Gold and Tin:
Talking to Nelly, Heathcliff is comparing Hindley's son Hareton with his own son Linton, using metaphors of gold and tin:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Don’t you think Hindley would be proud of his son, if he could see him? almost as proud as I am of mine—But there’s this difference, one is gold put to the use of paving stones; and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver—Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go.
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Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—A Devil to Me:
As Heathcliff anticipates death and reunion with Catherine, he hyperbolically compares her to both a devil and "heaven."
In Chapter 29, Heathcliff tells Nelly how strongly he senses his beloved Catherine's spirit near him, yet he can't see her. This is such a torment for him that he calls Catherine a "devil" whose "tortures" are "infernal" (hellish):
Unlock with LitCharts A+I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning, from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more, and sometimes less, I’ve been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal—keeping my nerves at such a stretch, that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would, long ago, have relaxed to the feebleness of Linton’s.
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Chapter 34
Explanation and Analysis—A Devil to Me:
As Heathcliff anticipates death and reunion with Catherine, he hyperbolically compares her to both a devil and "heaven."
In Chapter 29, Heathcliff tells Nelly how strongly he senses his beloved Catherine's spirit near him, yet he can't see her. This is such a torment for him that he calls Catherine a "devil" whose "tortures" are "infernal" (hellish):
Unlock with LitCharts A+I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning, from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more, and sometimes less, I’ve been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal—keeping my nerves at such a stretch, that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would, long ago, have relaxed to the feebleness of Linton’s.
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