Classical Allusion
Joyce is the serious writer you may have heard about it. Not a best-selling hack, but one those writers who metaphors are steeped in allusion to classical literature and mythology. For instance, the reader unfamiliar with the virgin huntress of Greek mythology will be at a major loss to understand the significance of the following simile in the story “A Little Cloud.”
“Their faces were powdered and they caught up their dresses, when they touched earth, like alarmed Atalantas.”
The Establishing Shot
The metaphor can be used in the same way as an establishing shot in a movie. The stage is first set with a simple descriptive simile and then the comparison gets drawn out and colored in over the course of the rest of the paragraph. For instance, this opening line in a paragraph about halfway through the story titled “A Mother.”
“All this time the dressing-room was a hive of excitement.”
Subtlety
Not all metaphor is immediately obvious as such. On occasion, the metaphorical aspects of a description can be so seamlessly integrated into the imagery that the comparison almost gets completely lost:
“The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets.”
Character Description
Of course, one of the most useful ways to engage metaphorical imagery in writing is simple character description. With just one “like” or “as” a writer can convey more about the inherent character of a person than a thousand words can accomplish without such comparison:
“At last, when she judged it to be the right moment, Mrs. Mooney intervened. She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.”
Slang
Slang is intertwined with metaphor. The imagery in these cases is often dependent upon culture, nationality, or simply just the era in which the story was written. Of course, in some cases, even if one does not fully understand the entire significance of the slang, contextual clues can be enough to provide the essential gist:
“Poor old Larry Hynes! Many a good turn he did in his day! But I'm greatly afraid our friend is not nineteen carat.”
