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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Grave:
In describing the “hole” in which he lives after being chased by members of various political factions in New York, the narrator uses both simile and metaphor:
Now don’t jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a “hole” it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole. And remember, a bear retires to his hole for the winter and lives until spring; then he comes strolling out like the Easter chick breaking from its shell. I say all this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I’m invisible and live in a hole, I am dead. I am neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation.
The small apartment he has carved out for himself in the basement of an all-white building in New York City is not, he claims in a simile, “cold like a grave.” He insists that he is not “dead nor in a state of suspended animation” while living in this subterranean lair. Instead, he uses the metaphor of hibernation. Just as “a bear retires to his hole for the winter and lives until spring,” he feels that he is hibernating in his new abode until the right moment, “like the Easter chick breaking from its shell.” One implication of the narrator’s figurative language is that he intends, like a hibernating animal, to only remain in his burrow temporarily.
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