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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
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Crisco:
In the first chapter of the novel, Aibileen discusses her late son Treelore, a precocious child who loved to read. They would play a game in which Aibileen would name a word and Treelore had to think of a more complicated synonym. She stumped him on the word "Crisco," the brand name of a vegetable shortening sold in a can. "Crisco" comes to hold other metaphorical significance for Aibileen and Treelore:
One day I say Crisco. He scratch his head. He just can’t believe I done won the game with something simple as Crisco. Came to be a secret joke with us, meaning something you can’t dress up no matter how you try. We start calling his daddy Crisco cause you can’t fancy up a man done run off on his family. Plus he the greasiest no-count you ever known.
After Treelore cannot think of a synonym for "Crisco," it becomes a "secret joke," in that they use the word "Crisco" to refer to anything "you can’t dress up no matter how you try." This metaphor is important to the novel as a whole, as Aibileen and the other maids will encounter many things they cannot "dress up" even if they try. Aibileen and Treelore also especially use Crisco for Treelore's father, extending the comparison because he is "greasy" like shortener. This metaphor uses a kitchen staple, relying on familiar imagery in the novel to depict the trials and tribulations that Aibileen and other maids experience in their work.
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Bitter Seed:
In Chapter 7, just after Elizabeth scolds Mae for using the bathroom in the garage, Aibileen takes the bus back into the city. She seethes over the overt racism that Elizabeth just showed in punishing Mae for using the bathroom. Her anger and frustration grows over time, as she describes in a metaphor:
The bus speeds up along State Street. We pass over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and my jaw so tight I could break my teeth off. I feel that bitter seed growing inside a me, the one planted after Treelore died. I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain’t a color [...]. I want to stop that moment from coming—and it come in ever white child’s life—when they start to think that colored folks ain’t as good as whites.
Aibileen feels as if a "bitter seed" grows inside of her—a seed that represents her anger at White people and their brutal oppression. The metaphor shows that these feelings can develop slowly over time, like a seed waiting to sprout. Aibileen references this seed throughout the novel whenever she is maligned, insulted, or punished by White people; it is the "bitterness" that turns her usually amiable personality into fury in these moments.
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Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—The Color of Shame:
During one of their interviews in Chapter 11, Aibileen reads her stories to Skeeter and tells her how she was fired from her previous job. After being fired, Aibileen feels she understands the color of shame, using a metaphor to explain what shame felt like to her:
“I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month’s worth a light bill for. I guess that’s when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain’t black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.”
At first, Aibileen thought shame was black, "like dirt." She associated shame with a dark, undesirable feeling, fit to be colored in black. This is of course connected to the fact that Aibileen felt much of her shame for how she was treated by White people; she thought shame was a similar color to the skin for which she was oppressed and stigmatized.
In fact, though, as Aibileen describes, "shame be the color of a new white uniform." Instead of black dirt, she suggests, shame is best expressed by the white uniform that symbolizes subservience. Again in contrast to her earlier thought, the shameful thing about the uniform, according to Aibileen, is its cleanliness—"white without a smudge or a speck of work-dirt on it." Hilly, Elizabeth, and other characters often accuse Aibileen and other Black characters of being unclean or diseased. But this metaphor shows that shame, for Aibileen, is not a feeling of dirtiness but a feeling of forced cleanliness in servitude to White racists.
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Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Through the Gate:
After multiple sessions of interviews, in Chapter 12, Aibileen finally tells Skeeter about her current job with the Leefolts. This is what Skeeter has wanted to hear all along. Though she has been patient with Aibileen's cautious information, Skeeter is pleased to finally hear the story she set out to tell. Skeeter describes the feeling of having finally gained Aibileen's trust using a metaphor:
On the sixth session, Aibileen says, “I went to work for Miss Leefolt in 1960. When Mae Mobley two weeks old,” and I feel I’ve passed through a leaden gate of confidence. She describes the building of the garage bathroom, admits she is glad it is there now. It’s easier than listening to Hilly complain about sharing a toilet with the maid.
Skeeter feels like she "passed through a leaden gate of confidence." She now has access to Aibileen's most carefully guarded experiences. The image of a "leaden gate" evokes large estates with enforced boundaries. In the American South, such gates would more often be associated with White landowners defending their property. Thus, this metaphor creates a surprising reversal, in which Aibileen's internal life becomes a vast tract of land that she controls, guarded by a strong gate.
Note also that this is the third time that the novel describes the same moment, the building of the garage bathroom at the Leefolt home. (This follows Aibileen's direct description of the event in Chapter 2 and Skeeter's consideration of the event on the phone with Aibileen in Chapter 9.) The novel uses a variety of different storytelling parameters to describe this event in different ways. Here, the added element of retrospect lessens Aibileen's anger over the bathroom earlier.
Related Themes:
