The Metaphor/Simile/Metaphor Connection
Very often a writer delivers a metaphor that is followed by another metaphor and a simile followed by another simile. Less common is the simile following a metaphor which is then followed by a completely different metaphor. Less common still is the metaphor/simile/metaphor connection where the comparisons to the thing are completely unrelated. But it does happen:
“Winter here is a pitiless bitch, but in the warm months Bloomington is a lot like a seaside community except here the ocean is corn”
And not the Last, Either
The author weighs in on the formerly fashionable trend of thinking highly of Ronald Reagan, nothing that at the time (before Trump) it was a fairly standard view. But not among everybody. He might have been onto something, however, though he doesn't go so far as to predict history would repeat quite so quickly:
“Even in the 80s, most younger Americans, who could smell a marketer a mile away, knew that what Reagan really was was a great salesman.”
About those Lobsters...
The author’s consideration of the lobster is in reference to the apparently widespread belief that when prepared for meals at a hefty market price, the sea creatures just don’t feel any pain:
“Perhaps lobsters are more like those frontal-lobotomy patients one reads about who report experiencing pain in a totally different way than you and I.”
Sensory Detail
A particularly effective use of a simile to pull the reader right into the scene by making them actually smell it occurs with a description of a news studio. It is almost impossible not to actually sniff the aroma as you read the words:
“The oddest thing about the studio is a strong scent of decaying bananas, as if many cast-off peels or even whole bananas were rotting in the room’s wastebaskets.”
The Book's Best Metaphor
Unfortunately for Wallace, the single most artfully constructed metaphor in the entire book is not his own, but rather a quote he attributes to Franz Kafka. Considering the high level of esteem the author confers up Kafka, he would probably agree with this assessment. The quote is Kafka’s summing up of the value of literature, declaring it:
“a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.”
