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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
Part 1: Ness
Explanation and Analysis—Devil in Hell:
Metaphors speak in ways that descriptions alone cannot. In Ness’s narrative, metaphor underscores the ghastliness of her experience of enslavement. She thinks back to her first master one night while awaiting punishment from Allan Stockham:
She is back in Hell. She is married to a man they call Sam, but who comes straight from the Continent and speaks no English. The master of Hell, the Devil himself, with red-leather skin and a shock of gray hair, prefers his slaves married "for reasons of insurance," and because Ness is new to Hell and because no one has claimed her, she is given to calm the new slave Sam.
Homegoing’s narrator never explains that the plantation is “Hell,” or that Ness’s former master is the “Devil himself.” It hardly needs to—this metaphor creates such a commanding comparison that the reader picks up the message for themselves. Slavery is not merely like Hell; rather, it is Hell itself. Details like the “red-leather skin”—which both the master and Devil share—make the conceit feel almost literal.
This brief comparison also hints at the wickedness of her former master. In the pages thereafter, he whips Sam and Ness until they bleed, hunts them down when they escape, and decapitates Sam. Homegoing shares some of its most graphic descriptions of violence and cruelty as Ness revisits her torturous past. Her first master is every bit the Devil, reigning joyously over each square inch of Hell.
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Part 2: Marcus
Explanation and Analysis—Beached Beast:
A metaphor reawakens the past during Marjorie and Marcus’s trip to Cape Coast. Their tour of the Castle brings them back in direct contact with history:
And soon they were headed down. Down into the belly of this large, beached beast. Here, there was grime that could not be washed away. Green and gray and black and brown and dark, so dark. There were no windows. There was no air.
Imagining the Castle as a “large, beached beast” creates a terrifying impression. It transforms an otherwise inanimate structure into a hulking, Leviathan-like monster that devours the two tourists—impossible to ignore, even if half-dying and “beached.” Though devoid of its former occupants, the Castle continues to exert its brutish force over the city and visitors. Centuries after abolition, the slave trade continues to loom over its characters. Like the “grime” that cakes its inner walls, history’s injustices can never be fully washed away.
The metaphor reminds the reader of the past’s enduring proximity. The dungeon still smells “faintly” of the human bodies that had been tortured in it. The windowless rooms remain haunted by the anguish of the past. The Castle grips Marcus to the point where he escapes to the water outside. Like the novel itself, the Castle brings the past to life.
Related Themes:
