Eight Steps to Surviving Quicksand (metaphor)
When Finch moves into his closet after he and Violet oversleep at Purina Tower, and she is banned from seeing him, he fixates on this list about how to survive quicksand. He stays perfectly still, much like you're supposed to do if stuck in quicksand; panicking only pulls you down faster. Finch reads through the list, interpreting each point in a way that has resonance with his situation with Violet. You're meant to avoid quicksand, but it's too late for that. You're meant to drop everything, go without clothes or belongings, so he has moved to the closet, where he has limited possessions. You're meant to relax and breathe deeply, get on your back, take your time, and take breaks. This is an extended metaphor to describe how low he's feeling now that things have been messed up with Violet.
The flowers (metaphor)
When Finch gives Violet the flowers he picked for her at the farm, she says, "No more winter at all. Finch, you brought me spring" (265). Violet had been sad because of the snow, which reminds her of Eleanor, and the flowers usher in some brightness, like those bright places referenced in the title of the novel. To Violet, the flowers are a metaphor for Finch saving her life, for helping her through the darkness and toward the brightness.
"I'm standing on the highest ledge" (metaphor)
When Finch messages Violet that he's standing on the highest ledge, she doesn't know what he's talking about. Later, when she's completing the wanderings, she goes to the tree where all the shoes are hanging, and she sees Finch's sneaker hanging on the highest branch—her first sign from him. However, there is also a metaphor at work: the line of course evokes death by hanging, and while that's not how Finch died, it has some resonance with the distress he would have been feeling at the time of his suicide.
"Black, sinking moods" (metaphor)
Finch tells Violet that he gets into "kind of black, sinking moods. [He] imagines it's what being in the eye of a tornado would be like, all calm and blinding at the same time" (294). While Finch doesn't come out and say that he has depression, he tries to explain the feeling in metaphor. The image of being inside the tornado evokes both the feeling of being stuck and the feeling of being jostled around, therefore a deeply dislocating feeling.
Cigarettes as poison (simile)
Finch lights a cigarette. He does it without thinking, since smoking is one of his old bad habits. But all of a sudden, he can picture his lungs turning “as black as a newly paved road." He compares it to a poison, and he extinguishes it.
