The Poor in America as Being Dispossessed (Extended metaphor)
An extended metaphor in Beale Street is of the poor in America as being dispossessed. For example, Tish describes the vocational school that Fonny goes to as "really teaching the kids to be slaves." Similarly, she is reminded of being on a slave ship when she commutes to work on the subway: "I looked around the subway car. It was a little like the drawings I had seen of slave ships. Of course, they hadn't had newspapers on the slave ships, hadn't needed them yet; but, as concerned space (and also, perhaps, as concerned intention) the principle was exactly the same." Tish sees how mistreated and overlooked the working class people of America are and understands their position to be not unlike that of slaves. Tish uses this metaphor to harshly condemn the system that she grew up in and whose disastrous effects she has seen firsthand.
Prison as desert (simile and metaphor)
A recurring metaphor in the pages of Beale Street is Tish describing the Tombs as the Sahara desert. She uses this metaphor to endow the Tombs with the same connotations that the Sahara desert holds: barrenness, lack of livelihood, and danger.
"I walked out, to cross these big, wide corridors I've come to hate, corridors wider than all the Sahara desert. The Sahara is never empty; these corridors are never empty."
"The poor are always crossing the Sahara. And the lawyers and bondsmen and all that crowd circle around the poor, exactly like vultures. Of course, they're not any richer than the poor, really, that's why they've turned into vultures."
Lovers as alley-cats
Fonny compares Mr. and Mrs. Hunt's lovemaking to the sounds that two alley cats make. This is an apt simile, since it shows how Fonny feels about having to overhear his parents' lovemaking. Fonny, instead of comparing his parents to something romantic, chooses to describe them instead with something that has violent and feral undertones, something dirty, something that takes place on the streets.
"Because this, you dig? was like the game you hear two alley cats playing in the alley. Shit. She going to whelp and mee-e-ow till times get better, she going to get that cat, she going to run him all over the alley, she going to run him till he bite her by the neck" (16)
Days of the week as weather (extended simile)
When describing her neighborhood, Tish uses weather to describe the different days of the week. This allows the reader to easily understand what she means about her community even if they have never lived there or been to Harlem.
"Saturday afternoon is like a cloud hanging over, it's like waiting for a storm to break. But, on Sunday mornings the clouds have lifted, the storm has done its damage and gone. No matter what the damage was, everybody's clean now" (20)
