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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
Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—Boiling Wife:
After finishing dinner, the narrator, his wife, and his wife’s blind friend Robert retire to the living room. Robert shows interest in learning more about the narrator (who he has just met), and the narrator responds by being curt with the man (whose relationship with his wife he envies). All of this leads to the narrator’s wife getting angry at him, which the narrator alludes to metaphorically, as seen in the following passage:
From time to time he’d turn his blind face toward me, put his hand under his beard, ask me something. How long had I been at my present position? (Three years.) Did I like my work? (I didn’t.) Was I going to stay with it? (What were the options?)
Finally, when I thought he was beginning to run down, I got up and turned on the TV.
My wife looked at me with irritation. She was heading toward a boil.
When the narrator notes at the end of this passage that his wife “was heading toward a boil,” he is describing his wife’s rage metaphorically. Her anger is so hot that she is almost “boiling over” the way that a pot of water might. Readers can intuit that the reason she is so “irritated” with her husband is a combination of his terse parenthetical replies to Robert’s open-ended questions and the fact that he turns on the TV in order to keep Robert from further engaging him in conversation.
This is one of the many moments in the story when the narrator fails to open up to others, choosing isolation over intimacy. It is notable that, by the end of the story, Robert’s gentle presence does shift the narrator into a more open-hearted state.
Related Themes:
