Sing, Unburied, Sing: Metaphors 5 key examples

Mam knows that if she dies without paying the proper tributes and conducting the correct rituals, there’s a chance that she’ll become a ghost. She is horrified by the idea of being trapped on earth, forced to stew in the pain of unresolved things left behind. The metaphor she uses to describe this—when she describes becoming “empty breath”—shows how terrified she is of being forced into an existence like Richie’s. Ghosts are forced to walk the same paths they did in life without ever being able to escape. The things that hurt them tie them to the earth, making them “bitter at the marrow” of their “bones.” They can’t communicate with most people, no matter how hard they try. Mam’s fear of becoming “empty breath” when she’s a ghost suggests that she thinks of that fate as something that will force her to eternally seek understanding to no avail. If she became a ghost, Mam believes she would be "bitter" in the “marrow of her bones.” Ghosts like Richie and Given are frozen in the aftermath of their traumatic lives. They can't let go of their pain or move on, and they have to exist in an eternal state of grudge-holding. Mam believes her whole being could become soaked in unfulfilled resentment if Leonie doesn’t help her pass on. 

Leonie’s metaphor compares the memory of the horrible dream to a physical injury. This image brings the dream into the real world and makes the frightening events of it feel as though they really happened. The sense of helplessness and of betraying her family ultimately impacted Leonie—and bruises form from impact. They do not disappear quickly, but stick around as a reminder of the initial pain. When she says the memory “hurts when I touch it,” she’s suggesting that returning to thoughts of the dream brings fresh pain every time. She cannot ignore it, even if she wants to move past it. The metaphor also signals guilt, an emotion that Leonie is all too familiar with. In the dream, Leonie watched her family drown without being able to help them or to stop it. That failure stays with her even in the daylight. The dream may not have been real, but the feeling of having let her children and husband down definitely is. Even as the dream fades from view, the hurt continues underneath.

The metaphor Jojo uses here compares Mam’s approaching death to a mouth, wide and waiting for her to enter. It’s as though he can actually see it coming for the old woman. Jojo’s choice of words shows how alert he is to every sign that Mam might be slipping away. By making Death an active figure with a mouth that moves, Ward shows the pressure Jojo feels in this final conversation with his grandmother. Mam’s body is weakening, and Jojo imagines Death already circling, ready to act. This passage makes death feel close and inescapable in a way that terrifies Jojo. Jojo does not describe Death as a state of being, but as a being itself that actively wants to devour Mam. The phrase “set to swallow” suggests that Jojo knows death is already in motion, and is already on its way to take Mam from him. 

The metaphor Ward uses here compares sorrow to food stuck in the throat. This image makes the emotion feel like a physical blockage rather than something that Leonie is processing emotionally. For Leonie, whose grief is very fresh, the feeling of Mam’s passing does not sit in the mind or heart as it might normally. Instead, she feels like it's blocking her airway, tightening her chest and stealing her breath. Rather than describing sadness in abstract terms, this metaphor brings it into Leonie’s body. The reader can imagine the sensation of a lump in their throat as the grief Leonie feels chokes her and prevents her from speaking. This metaphor also emphasizes how sudden and uncontrollable the onset of grief is. Leonie cannot prepare for it or pace herself through it. Her grief rushes into her throat and gets caught, just like food “swallowed too quickly.”

Richie believes that in order to get to heaven, he needs to be able to “follow the song” that he persistently hears. Richie often describes a “song” that pulls the dead toward peace, but he cannot seem to follow it no matter how hard he tries. He believes that the “song” will lead him to where his soul is supposed to go, but he can’t get to it because of the hold that Parchman has over him.

When he uses the metaphor of “hitting the wrong keys,” he’s linking the idea of “wandering against the song” (failing to pass on into the next life) to playing incorrect notes in a melody. The Black dead of Mississippi strike the “wrong notes” after death because of all the terrible things that happened to them in life. The idea of “wandering against the song” is a poetic way of describing the kind of detached, drifting existence Richie has been forced to endure since he died. Dead people like Richie move in the wrong direction. The song wants them to rise into the air, but they can't because they are pulled down to Earth by the weight of what happened to them. Richie's words make it clear that death has not freed the other souls he's telling Jojo about from their mortal suffering. The music those souls should follow is playing for them as it is for everyone, but they cannot join it. Their lives, and the way they ended, have knocked them permanently out of step with the song.