State of Mind
Much of the metaphorical language in the book is devoted to providing a glimpse inside the mind of its first-person narrator. That mind ranges across a broad expanse of emotional and psychological territory and so the metaphorical imagery which illuminates and enlightens offers some of the text’s literary highlights:
“The night is a jet-black lake. A person could sink down and even disappear without a trace.”
Metaphorical Menagerie
That fertile mind of the narrator reveals a propensity for drawing metaphorical comparisons to animals. From cats and dogs to lions and tigers, the narration is a menagerie of figurative fauna, but she seems to show a peculiar affection for birds of the night:
“Calla is standing in the doorway looking like a wind-dishevelled owl, a great horned owl, her fringed hair like grey-brown feathers every which way, her eyes ringed with the round brown frames of the glasses she wears only rarely so that they never stop seeming unusual on her.”
Narrator Sensitivity
In addition to her own capacity for constructing metaphor, the narrator also reveals an aptitude for understanding the motivation behind the use of figurative language used by others. For instance, her admonishment of Willard Siddley as a pompous fount of expression intended to make him seem an intellectual:
“That’s an enigmatic smile, Rachel. Is it the Sphinx or the Mona Lisa?”
Practical Sexual Fantasizing
Penetrating into the mind of the narrator is a fascinating deep dive that is occasionally revelatory about certain universal aspects of the imagination one never takes the time to think of until it is pointed out:
“In the mind, in that deep theatre, no one ever had to stumble through the awkward acts of undressing. The clothes vanished by themselves.”
Rachel in a Nutshell
Actually, there are many and varied moments of introspection that one might identify as being the figurative moment when Rachel describes herself in a nutshell. This is a pretty solid one, though:
“What a strangely pendulum life I have, fluctuating in age between extremes, hardly knowing myself whether I am too young or too old.”
