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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
Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—Recasting Relatives:
While Shaila, Kusum, and Dr. Ranganathan all lost family members in the fatal terrorist attack aboard India Air Flight 182, they become close to each other in the aftermath. In a phone call with Shaila, Dr. Ranganathan uses a metaphor to capture the way that people like them have become their own sort of family, as Shaila describes here:
The rest of us don’t lose touch, that’s the point. Talk is all we have, says Dr. Ranganathan, who has also resisted his relatives and returned to Montreal and to his job, alone. He says, whom better to talk with than other relatives? We’ve been melted down and recast as a new tribe.
Dr. Ranganathan uses a metaphor when describing how people like himself and Shaila have “been melted down and recast as a new tribe.” The language of melting and recasting typically applies to the way that metallic objects are recycled by being melted at high temperatures and recast as new objects. This metaphor is meant to capture the way that, having lost their blood family, the relatives of those killed in the attack form a new sort of family with each other, melting their old sense of family and identity and recasting themselves as “a new tribe” together. That Shaila and Dr. Ranganathan become family in this way demonstrates that hope and connection is possible even in the darkest moments of grief.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Kusum the Sea Creature:
When in Ireland to identify the bodies of their dead family members in the wake of the terrorist attack, Shaila and Kusum take a break to sit by the sea. Shaila pauses for a moment in the narration to describe her friend’s appearance, using a metaphor in the process:
I find Kusum squatting on a rock overlooking a bay in Ireland. It isn’t a big rock, but it juts sharply out over water. This is as close as we’ll ever get to them. June breezes balloon out her sari and unpin her knee-length hair. She has the bewildered look of a sea creature whom the tides have stranded.
The metaphor here—in which Kusum becomes “a sea creature whom the tides have stranded”—captures Kusum’s unkempt and “bewildered” state in this moment. Like a lost sea creature stranded on land, Kusum has been “stranded” by her family who died in the plane crash, uncertain of where (or to whom) she now belongs.
This is one of the many moments in the story in which Mukherjee metaphorizes the experience of grief in order to capture the devastating effects of it. Not only does Kusum become an alienated sea creature here, but the fact that Shaila, also now a widow, sees her friend that way indicates that she is aware of her own isolation and loss as well.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Shaila the Pillar:
When the government-appointed social worker Judith Templeton and grieving widow Shaila meet for the first time, Judith explains why she reached out, using a metaphor in the process:
“I’ve worked in liaison with accident victims, but I mean I have no experience with a tragedy of this scale—”
“Who could?” I ask.
“—and with the complications of culture, language, and customs. Someone mentioned that Mrs. Bhave is a pillar—because you’ve taken it more calmly.”
At this, perhaps, I frown, for she reaches forward, almost to take my hand.
Judith metaphorically refers to Shaila as “a pillar” because of her “calm” response to the loss of her husband and two sons in a horrific terrorist attack. This metaphor is meant to capture the ways that other members of Shaila’s Indian-Canadian community who lost loved ones in the attack have been distraught in the aftermath of the event.
This moment captures something important about the way that the bureaucratic Canadian government values controlled reactions to loss and grief over complex and messy ones, despite the fact that such reactions can also be viewed as maladaptive. That Shaila “frowns” in response to Judith’s description of her indicates that Shaila is aware that her “calm” is actually a painful sort of numbness. She does not want to be viewed as a “pillar” that stands strong but as a grieving person who uses dissociation to cope.
Related Themes:
