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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 4: The Fourth Night
Explanation and Analysis—It Was a Monster:
Throughout The White Tiger, metaphors frame Balram’s experience in evocative terms: his father’s spine is a “knotted rope,” and the tea shop workers are essentially “human spiders.” In some instances, metaphor also adds an unsettlingly supernatural twist to the novel. While waiting at the Connaught Place for Ashok in Chapter 4, Balram watches the construction of a new mall from afar:
It was a monster, sitting at the top of the pit with huge metal jaws alternately gorging and disgorging immense quantities of mud. Like creatures that had to obey it, men with troughs of mud on their head.
In a work so otherwise focused on specific animal comparisons, Balram’s comparison of the construction crane to a “monster” is hauntingly abstract. With its “metal jaws” that consume the earth, the machine seemingly defies Balram’s attempts to describe it. Balram’s retreat into a fantastical comparison only emphasizes the machine’s supernatural quality—for a moment here, the jokester comes face to face with a menacingly unfamiliar new object that he struggles to describe.
The “gorging and disgorging” monster creates an impression of something threatening, unformed, and primordial. As workers swirl around the machine in obedience to it, this moment takes on the feel of a vaguely nightmarish tableau. Balram’s comparison—uncharacteristically fantastic in this instance—forces the reader to approach the familiar world anew. By showing the monstrous side to the city’s glitzy new malls, it also gives renewed urgency to the economic disparities in this modernizing Indian society. Balram awakens a sense of terror that might not have come through his humor alone.
Related Themes:
