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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
Prologue
Explanation and Analysis—Brideshead Mentioned:
In the Prologue, an aged Charles learns that he and his soldiers have been stationed at Brideshead, now vacated by the Flyte family. In his moment of recognition, Charles experiences a flashback, recalling his time spent with Sebastian and Julia:
“What’s this place called?”
He told me and, on the instant, it was as though someone had switched off the wireless, and a voice that had been bawling in my ears, incessantly, fatuously, for days beyond number, had been suddenly cut short; [...] for he had spoken a name that was so familiar to me, a conjuror’s name of such ancient power, that, at its mere sound, the phantoms of those haunted late years began to take flight.
In the above passage, a simple mention of the name "Brideshead" triggers Charles's memories, leading him to recall several formative relationships and events in his life. Charles uses metaphor to compare the name "Brideshead" to that of a "conjuror," such is the emotional power associated with the old estate. The fact that Charles experiences such a shift—from mental disturbance to quiet, pensive recall—is noteworthy. While Brideshead does hold positive memories for Charles, those memories are ultimately "phantoms" of "haunted late years," ghosts of a past once buried that have come back to remind him of lost relationships.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—The Garden:
In the following excerpt from Part 1, Chapter 1, Charles describes the manner of his falling in love with Sebastian, utilizing both metaphor and allusion:
I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground and there was a tiny, priggish, warning voice in my ear which in the tones of Collins told me it was seemly to hold back. But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that gray city.
The metaphor Charles uses in this passage is an allusion to The Secret Garden, a famous British children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In the novel, a young girl discovers an enchanted garden with healing powers, hidden in the walls of her uncle's house.
Charles searches for love with Sebastian, which he likens to searching for a "low door in the wall," opening on an "enclosed and enchanted garden." In searching for Sebastian, Charles seeks to escape the world around him and discover a blissful, ignorant, prolonged adolescence. He longs for a secret garden that he and Sebastian alone can peruse, sequestered from the world in one another's presence.
It is noteworthy that Charles alludes to a children's novel to describe his early relationship with Sebastian. Indeed, when the two boys meet, they both teeter on the cusp of adulthood, eager to enjoy the world's pleasures but reluctant to absorb subsequent responsibilities. Charles's childhood-centered allusion reflects his idealistic early love for Sebastian, adolescent in its desires and whims.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Conversational Weapons:
Throughout the first half of Part 1, Chapter 3, Charles engages in a metaphorical battle with his father, using conversation and social engagements as weapons. This warlike language permeates Brideshead Revisited, transfiguring normal social encounters into metaphorical representations of wartime action.
The following excerpt from Part 1, Chapter 3 is the first of several military metaphors Charles uses to describe the social power struggle between him and his father:
Next day, by chance, a weapon came to hand. I met an old acquaintance of school-days, a contemporary of mine named Jorkins. I never had much liking for Jorkins.
Charles plans to use an odious acquaintance as a "weapon" against his father, forcing him to interact with an unpleasant person. This is Charles's own way of resisting parental influence: though he is not as openly rebellious as Sebastian, he clearly resents the control his father exerts over his life.
The battle continues, with Mr. Ryder's response:
That evening [my father] wore, like a chivalric badge of battle, a small red rose in his button-hole. Dinner was long and chosen, like the guests, in a spirit of careful mockery.
In response to his son's rebellion, Mr. Ryder invites odious guests of his own—an action intended to put his rebellious son in place. Mr. Ryder ultimately has the advantage of age, resources, and power over his son, as Charles notes in the following paragraph:
Strife was internecine during the next fortnight, but I suffered the more, for my father had greater reserves to draw on and a wider territory for maneuver, while I was pinned to my bridgehead between the uplands and the sea.
While such metaphors elucidate Charles's relationship with his father, they also speak to Charles's state of mind as a narrator. War sits front and center; and the language of war, omnipresent in Brideshead Revisited, in turn reflects the strife and conflict marring the first half of the 20th century in Europe.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Sebastian's Lost Youth:
In Part 1, Chapter 5, Charles uses a curious extended metaphor to describe Sebastian’s psyche:
By the blue waters and rustling palms of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a Polynesian; only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef, and the cutter beached in the lagoon, and, up the slope that had never known the print of a boot, there trod the grim invasion of trader, administrator, missionary, and tourist—only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and sound the drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness, where the impotent, painted deities paraded the walls in vain, and cough his heart out among the rum bottles.
Charles compares Sebastian to his own view of a colonized Polynesian person: happy and content, unable to anticipate danger or discomfort until it is on his doorstep. The minute Sebastian encounters a "grim invasion" from one of his family members (for this is how he perceives familial concern and intimacy), the young aesthete receives an abrupt jolt to his jovial contentedness. Faced with disruption and destruction, he turns to drinking.
Charles’s characterization of Polynesian people in this passage should not be accepted without question. In fact, comparing Polynesians to Sebastian in this scenario is demeaning to pre-colonization Polynesian people, implying that they were ignorant, naïve, or wholesale addicts rather than people who had their trust and goodwill taken advantage of by insincere Europeans.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Julia, Removed:
In the following example of metaphor from Part 2, Chapter 2, Charles likens Julia to a military strategist, with a level of emotional and physical remove from the future consequences of her present actions:
[S]he lived apart in a little world [....]. She was wondering, dispassionately and leagues distant from reality, whom she should marry. Thus strategists hesitate over the map, the few pins and lines of colored chalk, contemplating a change in the pins and lines, a matter of inches, which outside the room, out of sight of the studious officers, may engulf past, present, and future in ruin or life.
The emotional remove Charles describes here is, first and foremost, a function of privilege. Privilege is itself a function of power. Military generals derive this power from governmental authority, rank, and lethal might; Julia derives her power from wealth. On account of her wealthy upbringing, Julia can afford to remove herself from reality. She can choose to escape, where others less privileged are forced to contend with action and consequence.
Charles falls in love with Julia for the same reason he falls in love with Sebastian: both Flyte siblings manifest a kind of willful escapism Charles envies, or at the very least admires. Though different, Julia and Sebastian equally cling to the privileged ignorance afforded them by wealth and youth, avoiding personal, familial, and societal problems by running away. Sebastian literally flees to another country; Julia, on the other hand, marries Rex Mottram and abandons Catholicism, sequestering herself fiscally and relationally.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Vagabond Language:
In the following example of metaphor from Part 3, Chapter 4, Charles responds to Julia’s accusation that he has forgotten Sebastian, her brother and his once-friend, almost-lover.
“Perhaps,” I thought, [...] "perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us [...].”
I had not forgotten Sebastian. He was with me daily in Julia; or rather it was Julia I had known in him, in those distant Arcadian days.
Charles contradicts Julia's accusation, claiming that he has not abandoned Sebastian in his heart—how can he, when he sees so much of Sebastian in Julia, and vice versa? Using metaphor, Charles compares his various paramours to "vagabond language," written on fence posts marking out the road of life. Both Julia and Sebastian are "hints and symbols," providing insight into Charles's conscience and character. The love Waugh’s narrator fosters for the Flyte siblings attests to his own fanciful nature and disenchantment with modern society. Charles yearns for something more, as Julia and Sebastian do, but does not possess the same material resources that would allow him to flout social deviance with impunity. The insight Charles derives from his relationships with the Flytes is thus akin to “vagabond language,” scrawled by an inexperienced and perhaps misleading hand. Their presence is formative but not instructive—except in that manner in which one learns from past missteps.
Related Themes:
