The gray and wretched world (Metaphor)
Marcovaldo definitely wasn’t a city lover. The world around him was bleak, unhappy and miserable. The only thing that made him happy was nature in all its forms and shapes: “he would never miss a leaf yellowing on a branch, a feather trapped by a roof-tile; there was no horsefly on a horse's back, no worm-hole in a plank, or fig-peel squashed on the sidewalk that Marcovaldo didn't remark and ponder over, discovering the changes of season, the yearnings of his heart, and the woes of his existence”. The metaphor represents Marcovaldo’s attitude toward the place where he lives.
The fog in thoughts (Metaphor)
One day Marcovaldo overslept his stop and went out in the district where he has never been before. He was scared because it was pretty late and he found the nearest care to ask the way. People in the café appeared to be very friendly and, one by one, they treated him with drink. Soon Marcovaldo understood, that he wont find out the way home if he go on drinking, so, he went out in search of way home. There was a dense fog outside and, as well, there was fog in Marcovaldo’s thoughts and not just because of wine, he was lost and he didn’t know what to do. The metaphor here shows his failure and how he felt about it.
Twenty seconds long night (Metaphor)
“The night lasted twenty seconds, then came twenty seconds of GNAC”… this vivid and poetic metaphor is, actually, quite mundane. Right opposite to the windows of Marcovaldo’s flat, there was a neon sign board and every 20 seconds it exploded with bright light so he and his family couldn’t sleep: “For twenty seconds you could see the blue sky streaked with black clouds, the gilded sickle of the waxing moon, outlined by an impalpable halo, and stars that, the more you looked at them, the denser their poignant smallness became, to the sprinkle of the Milky Way: all this seen in great haste; every detail you dwelt on was something of the whole that you lost, because the twenty seconds quickly ended and the GNAC took over”. The metaphor shows one of the disadvantages of city life.
The big occupation in the city (Metaphor)
At six in the evening the city fell into the hands of the consumers. People, going home from work, go to supermarkets to buy grocery. There are so many of them and their desire to consume is so high that the narrator sarcastically describes this spectacle: “An uninterrupted line wound along all the sidewalks and under the arcades, extended through the glass doors of the shops to all the counters, nudged onwards by each individual's elbows in the ribs of the next, like the steady throb of pistons”. The metaphor shows one of the realities of big city life.
