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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Toothless Grin:
Pinned under the brake pedal after crashing her Jaguar on the road to Whiskey, Bride looks up and sees the world looking down on her in an ominous way. The narrative uses personification and metaphor to convey the sense of malice that Bride experiences from the surrounding world:
The moon was a toothless grin and even the stars, seen through the tree limb that had fallen like a throttling arm across the windshield frightened her. The piece of sky she could glimpse was a dark carpet of gleaming knives pointed at her and aching to be released. She felt world hurt—an awareness of malign forces changing her from a courageous adventurer into a fugitive.
The moon “grins,” but without teeth—a mocking, rather sinister smile. Bride's entire view of the surrounding world is shot through with a kind of sinister violence, as the tree limb she sees becomes a "throttling arm." Above it, the sky metaphorically takes the form of a "dark carpet of gleaming knives." To add to this, the verbs in the passage—like "throttling," "pointed," and "aching"—are intense and vicious, which is what leads Bride to the "awareness of malign forces changing her from a courageous adventurer into a fugitive." In other words, the landscape seems so hostile that Bride feels altered on a fundamental level, no longer feeling "courageous" but instead feeling like someone who needs to constantly run from danger or harm.
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