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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 17
Explanation and Analysis—The Coin Trick:
The Judge performs a magic trick with a coin that serves as a metaphor for the scalp hunters' greed:
Watch the coin, Davy, he said. He flung it and it cut an arc through the firelight and was gone in the darkness beyond... The coin returned back out of the night and crossed the fire with a faint high droning and the judge’s raised hand was empty and then it held the coin.... Even so some claimed that he had thrown the coin away and palmed another like it and made the sound with his tongue for he was himself a cunning old malabarista and he said himself as he put the coin away what all men knew that there are coins and false coins.
The scalp hunters are deceived by the Judge into following the coin, only for the coin to reappear in the Judge's hand. Furthermore, the next morning many of them walked over the ground to search for the coin where the Judge threw it, but could not find it there. This moment is a metaphor for the greed of the Americans: they pursue wealth that they can never find, tricked by the Judge, who in many ways represents the Devil in Blood Meridian. Be it in the context of the gold rush and manifest destiny or the scalp trade, the pursuit of wealth brings with it nothing but pain and suffering.
The Judge, as he admits time and time again, is deceiving others constantly, and this coin trick is both one example of this deception as well as a metaphor for the role he plays in the story: promising false coin that will never come, for those that follow him are met with death instead. The Judge himself outlines the metaphor before completing the trick, explaining how "moons, coins, men" are all the same: determined by the length of their tether. Whether or not there was a tether attached to the coin, however, neither the reader nor the characters will never know.
