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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
Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—Technological Altar:
In some instances, the story uses metaphor to underscore the vapidity of humanity’s technological obsessions. While acquainting readers with the cast of self-operating contraptions and devices, the narrator portrays the McClellans’ house as a site of worship:
The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.
Presenting the McClellans’ house in such religious terms enables the story to deliver some of its most searing social critique. This a clearly perverse comparison, hyperbolic in scope with the effect of capturing readers' attention. The “altar,” with its “ten thousand” robotic attendants, establishes an uncomfortable affinity between the worldly inventions and immaterial spiritual meaning—two realms that Bradbury likely still expects his readers to hold separate. The unlikeliness of the metaphor’s pairing solicits our attention. The comparison also captures the troublingly fervent piety of this dystopian technological worship and the vanity that lurks beneath it all. The machines continue with the ceremonies even after the humans have left, sustaining the rituals “senselessly, uselessly.” Privileged as an outside observer, the reader can’t help but notice the immense folly of this “religion.” The metaphor exaggerates the frivolity of this technological worship.
But coupled with the later allusion to Baal, the metaphor also meditates upon the era’s metaphysical concerns. Following the development of nuclear weapons, the early Cold War years saw technology reach unprecedented levels of advancement. With the power to both create and destroy, human technology threatened to intrude into the divine. Identifying the house as an “altar” reflects these newfound anxieties, especially the threat that technology might erode familiar ethical standards. The household appliances are almost slightly comic as they bumble about their dead altar. But Bradbury warns that, if we mismanage our devices, we may witness the death of our own metaphysical commitments.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Elephants and Snakes:
The story features an instance of simile, metaphor, and personification in describing the house’s combat with the fire. As the fire sweeps across the kitchen, the ranks of vacuum mice scuttle out to contain the flames and the attic trapdoors deploy a “gushing green chemical”:
The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake. Now there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom of green froth.
In the first of these sentences, a simile links the fire’s movements to that of a frightened “elephant” recoiling before a snake. This is followed immediately by a metaphor that develops the comparison, identifying the “repellant” as the “snake.” Importantly, this transition from simile to metaphor intensifies the degree of comparison. The green chemicals don’t merely resemble “snakes”—at this point, they have become them. What had been understood to be the “dead snake” just one sentence before is now “whipping over the floor” and spewing “cold venom.” The repellant becomes more lifelike through the metaphor’s tightened association.
In doing so, this elaborate act of comparison invests the fire and repellant with an unlikely dynamism. Both the fire and its adversary are moving, attacking, and defending themselves. Their animalistic intensity creates a sense of vitality that is absent anywhere else. In a town of ruined houses buried beneath charcoal ash, they seem to be more lifelike and vivid than all of humanity’s own doomed creations.
Related Themes:
