Rapacious as Sharks (Simile)
In Part 1, Curren refers to her fear of "roaming gangs" of "sullen-mouthed boys, rapacious as sharks, on whom the first shade of the prison house is already beginning to close" (7). This simile reveals how Curren sees the non-whites, particularly non-white boys, as predators. She considers herself prey to them. She refers to a time three years prior when her home was burglarized, and she had bars fitted to the windows. Here, too, she imagines herself as preyed upon.
The Innocence of Bee Grubs (Metaphor)
In the same passage where she describes the "gangs" of "sullen-mouthed boys" as sharks, Curren describes white children as "bee grubs, plump and white, drenched in honey" (7). While this metaphor also indicts the whites for being "slumbrous" and ignorant, it also reveals Curren's bias against non-whites; she poses non-white South Africans as predatory while posing white, middle-class South Africans as benign and unaccountable for the harm they do.
Like Honey on Ashes (Simile)
When Bheki and John attack Vercueil in Curren's yard, they make Vercueil's lip bleed, and Curren describes seeing blood on his skin as "strange"—"strange to see blood on that leathery face. Like honey on ashes" (47). The simile obviously denotes a disjunction—honey isn't often found or drizzled over ashes, that would be a waste of honey—but the simile also draws on the novel's existing constellation of metaphors. Curren refers to honey when she characterizes whiteness in terms of "bee grubs ... drenched in honey" (7), and she also refers later in the novel to "bee ash" (158) when discussing how the heavens have room for the multitudes of departed souls.
Like a Moth From Its Case Emerging (Simile)
Curren has high hopes for her soul after death, and she places these hopes into this manuscript she's writing for her daughter. She writes, "It is the soul of me that will be left with you when this letter is over. Like a moth from its case emerging, fanning its wings: that is what, reading, I hope you will glimpse: my soul readying itself for further flight" (129). The moth metaphor plays further into the larval analogies that Curren develops throughout the novel. She hopes that in this letter, she can work through her complicity with apartheid.
Like Iron (Simile)
Florence is the first character in the novel to use the simile "like iron" (50) when discussing Bheki and his contemporaries, the rising generation of anti-apartheid Black South Africans. But later on, Curren co-opts the phrase to describe her daughter to Vercueil—"perhaps one day you will meet her, and then you will see. She is like iron." Vercueil turns the phrase back to Curren, telling her she is like iron, too. The title, Age of Iron, is taken from Hesiod's organization of history into material strata. The only major character to evade the "iron" description is Vercueil, suggesting that he somehow exists outside of the time, while everyone else is a product of their time.
