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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Shortened Tongue:
After Kernan drunkenly falls down the stairs at the pub and bites off a chunk of his tongue, his wife receives him at home and takes care of him. In the following passage, she reflects on her husband’s accident, using a metaphor in the process:
After a quarter of a century of married life, she had very few illusions left […]. She was tempted to see a curious appropriateness in [Kernan’s] accident and, but that she did not wish to seem bloody-minded, she would have told the gentlemen that Mr Kernan’s tongue would not suffer by being shortened.
The metaphorical language that Mrs. Kernan uses here—in which she thinks to herself that her husband’s tongue “would not suffer by being shortened”—is her way of saying that she believes it would be fine with her if her husband spoke less. In this metaphor, having a shorter tongue becomes equivalent to a loss of assertiveness. Perhaps, the metaphor suggests, Mrs. Kernan would be better able to control her husband if he could no longer speak.
This moment is significant in that it establishes Mrs. Kernan’s frustration with her husband and her lack of agency as the woman in their relationship (and in their society). Not only must she continue to care for her husband—who comes home drunk and injured at any time of the day—but she worries about seeming “bloody-minded” for expressing her desire to reign him in. In the story, Mrs. Kernan comes across as trapped in a relationship she doesn’t want without the ability to leave.
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