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Logos
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
Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—Animal Analogies:
Orwell makes frequent use of animal analogies to describe characters in 1984. While the novel is lacking in actual animals, it is full of people with animalistic appearances and tendencies, which Orwell underlines through metaphors and similes.
Animal analogies are not only a motif in this specific novel, but in Orwell's work overall. For example, in his allegorical novella Animal Farm, he uses anthropomorphized animal characters to criticize human society and political systems. In 1984, Orwell uses animal analogies to shed light on the inhumane nature of totalitarian governance, suggesting that the ability to feel compassion for others and think for oneself distinguishes people from animals. The comparisons also feel appropriate in the novel's propagandistic atmosphere, as propaganda cartoons often depict animals to criticize leaders, armies, and people.
The first book includes many instances in which the narrator compares characters to animals. For example, when Goldstein appears on the telescreen during the Two Minutes Hate, the narrator compares his face to that of a sheep, specifying that "the voice, too, has a sheeplike quality." At first, the similarity seems to be limited to simile and metaphor. Eventually, however, it becomes evident that the sheep resemblance is intended by the Party members who have created the footage of Goldstein, as his bleating voice turns into "an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep." The sheep comparison is, in some ways, rather ironic. While similes and metaphors revolving around sheep tend to connote the inability to think for oneself, the Party's issue with Goldstein is precisely that he thinks and acts independently of their will.
When Winston reflects back on people's responses to the telescreens during the Two Minutes Hate, the passage includes other animal analogies. There was, for example, a "little sandy-haired woman" whose mouth opened and shut "like that of a landed fish." In addition, the dark-haired girl cries "Swine! Swine! Swine!" at the screen.
At lunch in the canteen later that day, Winston seems to be surrounded by animals. To begin with, he is struck by how a man at a nearby table sounds like a duck: "The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck." In the same chapter, the narrator calls Winston's neighbor Parsons "froglike" and a man sitting on the other side of the room "beetlelike." Winston finds it curious how the Ministries is full of the latter: "little dumpy men, growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes." None of these animal comparisons give a positive impression of the characters surrounding Winston: the man who sounds like a duck is characterized as a propaganda machine, unable to think for himself; Parsons is characterized as clueless and slimy; the Ministry men are characterized as dirty and fickle.
Later in the novel, the specific metaphors and similes give way to more general animal analogies. Especially during Winston's torture in the third part, the narrator compares characters to animals in general. When the Skull-Faced Man is sent to Room 101, he begins howling "like an animal." Winston himself becomes "as shameless as an animal." The specific animal analogies in the beginning of the novel indicate that, under the totalitarian system, people are robbed of their humanity. The more general animal analogies at the end show that once they become prisoners and victims, people also lose their individuality.
Related Themes:
Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—Breaking Down:
The third book acquaints the reader with the Party's comprehensive and harrowing industry of torture. Dozens of people are employed to participate in the beatings, interrogations, and medical examinations of prisoners like Winston. Similes and metaphors in the second chapter of the third book show that, as he is progressively broken down, Winston feels less and like a human—and more and more like an animal, an inanimate object, or a detached body part.
In this chapter, the narrator writes that Winston feels "as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks." In another simile, Winston is "flung like a sack of potatoes onto the stone floor of a cell." He feels like his nerves are "in rags" and also feels reduced to his singular body parts: "He became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed whatever was demanded of him." This last example is not only an example of metaphor, but also of metonymy, as Winston is figuratively reduced to his constituent parts. Such metonymy works well with the dehumanization and suffering that Winston goes through, as it captures the way he feels himself broken down into fragments. Unable to do more than confess whatever they want him to confess, he feels a connection only to the parts of himself that play a part in his surrender. Over the course of this chapter, Winston gradually loses possession of himself as a human being—and even as a consistent whole.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—The Past:
Over the course of the first book, the past is described using metaphors and similes that revolve around mist, erasure, and unsolvable equations. Through this, Orwell shows that the Party's rigorous control of reality and narratives about reality has emptied history of the meaning it once had. In Winston's view, the Party's most dangerous power is its ability to control people's own memories of the past: "If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death."
In the third chapter of the first book, Winston ponders the meaninglessness of a past that is constantly subject to top-down alterations:
The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory? [...] Everything melted into mist.
At the end of a passage in which Winston reflects on the destruction of the past, he uses a metaphor to compare history to mist. While one can see and sometimes lightly feel mist, it cannot be captured. Mainly, it limits normal visibility. The past in Winston's world is not only nebulous, but adds to the obscurity of other aspects of life. Without a clear, verifiable knowledge of where one comes from, it is difficult to know where one is headed.
In the fourth chapter of the first book, this conception of the past is consolidated by a new metaphor. As Winston sits at his work desk making corrections to past records so that they correspond with the present, it occurs to him that history is like a palimpsest:
All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
A palimpsest is a manuscript page that has been scraped or wiped clean for the purpose of reuse. "Palimpsest" derives from an Ancient Greek word that means "scrape again," and it points to the ancient practice of reusing wax-coated tablets by smoothing them off after writing on them with a stylus. By comparing history to a palimpsest, Winston expresses that the Party uses the past at their whim: they tell a certain version of history while it works with their goals, until they wipe this version away in favor of a new, preferable version.
In the seventh chapter of the first book, another comparison occurs to Winston. With a simile, he compares the past to an unsolvable equation.
It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy.
Typically, a mathematical equation requires you to solve for one unknown variable. A single equation with two unknowns does not have a single solution. Through this simile, Winston captures the meaninglessness of the reality enforced by the Party. When the past is an unknown and the present is an unknown, it seems impossible to reach any stable, objective conclusions about the world. He then reinvokes the mist metaphor from the third chapter: "Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." Not only is Winston exasperated at having to witness this cycle, he is forced to play a part in it every day at work.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Past:
Over the course of the first book, the past is described using metaphors and similes that revolve around mist, erasure, and unsolvable equations. Through this, Orwell shows that the Party's rigorous control of reality and narratives about reality has emptied history of the meaning it once had. In Winston's view, the Party's most dangerous power is its ability to control people's own memories of the past: "If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death."
In the third chapter of the first book, Winston ponders the meaninglessness of a past that is constantly subject to top-down alterations:
The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory? [...] Everything melted into mist.
At the end of a passage in which Winston reflects on the destruction of the past, he uses a metaphor to compare history to mist. While one can see and sometimes lightly feel mist, it cannot be captured. Mainly, it limits normal visibility. The past in Winston's world is not only nebulous, but adds to the obscurity of other aspects of life. Without a clear, verifiable knowledge of where one comes from, it is difficult to know where one is headed.
In the fourth chapter of the first book, this conception of the past is consolidated by a new metaphor. As Winston sits at his work desk making corrections to past records so that they correspond with the present, it occurs to him that history is like a palimpsest:
All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
A palimpsest is a manuscript page that has been scraped or wiped clean for the purpose of reuse. "Palimpsest" derives from an Ancient Greek word that means "scrape again," and it points to the ancient practice of reusing wax-coated tablets by smoothing them off after writing on them with a stylus. By comparing history to a palimpsest, Winston expresses that the Party uses the past at their whim: they tell a certain version of history while it works with their goals, until they wipe this version away in favor of a new, preferable version.
In the seventh chapter of the first book, another comparison occurs to Winston. With a simile, he compares the past to an unsolvable equation.
It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy.
Typically, a mathematical equation requires you to solve for one unknown variable. A single equation with two unknowns does not have a single solution. Through this simile, Winston captures the meaninglessness of the reality enforced by the Party. When the past is an unknown and the present is an unknown, it seems impossible to reach any stable, objective conclusions about the world. He then reinvokes the mist metaphor from the third chapter: "Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." Not only is Winston exasperated at having to witness this cycle, he is forced to play a part in it every day at work.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—The Past:
Over the course of the first book, the past is described using metaphors and similes that revolve around mist, erasure, and unsolvable equations. Through this, Orwell shows that the Party's rigorous control of reality and narratives about reality has emptied history of the meaning it once had. In Winston's view, the Party's most dangerous power is its ability to control people's own memories of the past: "If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death."
In the third chapter of the first book, Winston ponders the meaninglessness of a past that is constantly subject to top-down alterations:
The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory? [...] Everything melted into mist.
At the end of a passage in which Winston reflects on the destruction of the past, he uses a metaphor to compare history to mist. While one can see and sometimes lightly feel mist, it cannot be captured. Mainly, it limits normal visibility. The past in Winston's world is not only nebulous, but adds to the obscurity of other aspects of life. Without a clear, verifiable knowledge of where one comes from, it is difficult to know where one is headed.
In the fourth chapter of the first book, this conception of the past is consolidated by a new metaphor. As Winston sits at his work desk making corrections to past records so that they correspond with the present, it occurs to him that history is like a palimpsest:
All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
A palimpsest is a manuscript page that has been scraped or wiped clean for the purpose of reuse. "Palimpsest" derives from an Ancient Greek word that means "scrape again," and it points to the ancient practice of reusing wax-coated tablets by smoothing them off after writing on them with a stylus. By comparing history to a palimpsest, Winston expresses that the Party uses the past at their whim: they tell a certain version of history while it works with their goals, until they wipe this version away in favor of a new, preferable version.
In the seventh chapter of the first book, another comparison occurs to Winston. With a simile, he compares the past to an unsolvable equation.
It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy.
Typically, a mathematical equation requires you to solve for one unknown variable. A single equation with two unknowns does not have a single solution. Through this simile, Winston captures the meaninglessness of the reality enforced by the Party. When the past is an unknown and the present is an unknown, it seems impossible to reach any stable, objective conclusions about the world. He then reinvokes the mist metaphor from the third chapter: "Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." Not only is Winston exasperated at having to witness this cycle, he is forced to play a part in it every day at work.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Room:
As the relationship between Julia and Winston develops, the room over Mr. Charrington's shop acquires many layers of meaning. In the fourth and fifth chapters of the second book, Orwell uses metaphors to describe the room, capturing Winston's awe over having a space where he is free to think, feel, and rest in private.
Mr. Charrington's room is a place where Julia and Winston are able to talk openly about the world they live in, as well as to imagine life in a different world. Calling forth this other world, Julia brings treats from the black market and even brings makeup and a dress. In a kind of roleplaying ritual, she dresses up every time she arrives. The room holds conflicting meanings for Winston and Julia. On the one hand, it comes to represent reprieve, escape, and fantasy. On the other hand, it represents transience, ephemerality, and vulnerability, as it reminds them of everything they cannot have.
The room is also closely associated with the glass paperweight, which Winston is attached to because it is useless and belongs to the past. For him, the room and the paperweight seem to contain each other: both are portals to the past, or perhaps to a future in which everyone is free to live as they live in the room. He reflects on this in the fourth chapter of the second book.
He turned over toward the light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight. [...] It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.
The metaphor of the room as a paperweight conjures up the awe Winston feels in the room, but it also sheds light on the fragility and impermanence of their life in it. It also demonstrates their isolation. The only place they feel safe to be themselves in the entire world can be contained in a small, fragile lump of glass.
Nevertheless, Winston and Julia don't have to be in the room to tap into its reprieve. The narrator explains this, on behalf of Winston, in the fifth chapter of the second book:
What mattered was that the room over the junk shop should exist. To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it. The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk.
In this metaphor, the room is not transformed into something smaller than itself, but into an entire, fantastical world. The metaphor imbues the room with boundless possibility, highlighting the hope and dynamism Winston builds by way of his relationship with Julia.
In the following paragraph, the narrator introduces yet another metaphor: "the room itself was sanctuary." Even if getting there is "difficult and dangerous" and they both know that "what was not happening could not last long," the room gives Winston and Julia escape from the surveillance, discipline, and overall gloom of the world beyond it. In it, they eat better, dress differently, and feel happier. At some point, the room doesn't simply represent a different world but becomes a different world.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—The Room:
As the relationship between Julia and Winston develops, the room over Mr. Charrington's shop acquires many layers of meaning. In the fourth and fifth chapters of the second book, Orwell uses metaphors to describe the room, capturing Winston's awe over having a space where he is free to think, feel, and rest in private.
Mr. Charrington's room is a place where Julia and Winston are able to talk openly about the world they live in, as well as to imagine life in a different world. Calling forth this other world, Julia brings treats from the black market and even brings makeup and a dress. In a kind of roleplaying ritual, she dresses up every time she arrives. The room holds conflicting meanings for Winston and Julia. On the one hand, it comes to represent reprieve, escape, and fantasy. On the other hand, it represents transience, ephemerality, and vulnerability, as it reminds them of everything they cannot have.
The room is also closely associated with the glass paperweight, which Winston is attached to because it is useless and belongs to the past. For him, the room and the paperweight seem to contain each other: both are portals to the past, or perhaps to a future in which everyone is free to live as they live in the room. He reflects on this in the fourth chapter of the second book.
He turned over toward the light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight. [...] It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.
The metaphor of the room as a paperweight conjures up the awe Winston feels in the room, but it also sheds light on the fragility and impermanence of their life in it. It also demonstrates their isolation. The only place they feel safe to be themselves in the entire world can be contained in a small, fragile lump of glass.
Nevertheless, Winston and Julia don't have to be in the room to tap into its reprieve. The narrator explains this, on behalf of Winston, in the fifth chapter of the second book:
What mattered was that the room over the junk shop should exist. To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it. The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk.
In this metaphor, the room is not transformed into something smaller than itself, but into an entire, fantastical world. The metaphor imbues the room with boundless possibility, highlighting the hope and dynamism Winston builds by way of his relationship with Julia.
In the following paragraph, the narrator introduces yet another metaphor: "the room itself was sanctuary." Even if getting there is "difficult and dangerous" and they both know that "what was not happening could not last long," the room gives Winston and Julia escape from the surveillance, discipline, and overall gloom of the world beyond it. In it, they eat better, dress differently, and feel happier. At some point, the room doesn't simply represent a different world but becomes a different world.
Related Themes:
