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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
Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Bad Spirits:
In Chapter 3, Saul chronicles his parents’ alcoholism with a metaphor. When his father and uncle return home from selling berries one afternoon, they come bearing a dangerously new substance:
When they returned they brought the white man with them in brown bottles. Spirits, Naomi called them. Bad spirits. Those spirits made the grown-ups move in strange, jerky ways and their talk was twisted. I fell asleep to evil laughter. Sometimes my mother lurched to her feet and danced around the fire, and the shadow she threw against the skin of the tent was like the outline of a skeleton.
Saul’s metaphor likens alcohol to “bad spirits,” a comparison that neatly captures the substance’s destructive effects. Like spirits, drink transforms his mother into something of a body possessed—“[lurching] to her feet and [dancing] around the fire” while her skeletal shadow presses against the tent. They make the grown-ups “move in strange, jerky ways” and their words “twisted.” And in keeping with the stuff of legends, they go from haunting the parents to the child. After he leaves the NHL, the drink that had crippled Saul’s parents takes him with it.
The novel uses this metaphor partly to explore the double meanings of “spirit,” too. “Spirit”—understood in its alternate sense—is the nickname for alcohol itself. The word signifies a mystical entity also happens to be plain booze. Under this interpretation, Saul’s metaphor breaks down: what seems like a figurative comparison under one definition merely points out the obvious in the other. This pun-like quality allows the book to contrast one definition with its warped counterpart, mirroring the very way Saul’s parents have strayed from their ancestors.
Related Themes:
