Maternal Metaphors
Motherhood is the mother of a great many metaphorical images. Thank God that moms are around to do so many things for us that no one else on the planet would think to do, right? When a writer wants to put across that a certain character is behaving in a caring manner, nothing beats a comparison to motherhood:
“She looked at him rather sadly, like a mother trying to explain to an infant that, yes, this flame was hot, too. All flames were hot.”
Darkness
Darkness as metaphor defines the modern worlds. This has been true since right around the time the modern world started shrinking as a result of planes, trains and automobiles. The more we got to know about more people than we had ever known, the more obvious it became that humans a very sinister species. Darkness is palpably alive as metaphor throughout this story which often takes place in literal darkness:
“And then they set foot on Night’s Bridge, and Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring—gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth...”
Characters Describing Characters
Dialogue is not usually the centerpiece of metaphorical language in modern prose. It’s not like the old days when characters could speak in lofty poetic language and nobody even though to wonder if people really talked like that. Today, metaphor-laden dialogue tends to reside almost exclusively in genre fiction such as this novel:
Mr. Croup pulled Richard’s head close to his, and smiled his graveyard smile. “He’s traveled so far beyond right and wrong he couldn’t see them with a telescope on a nice clear night.”
Animals
Animals make for effective metaphors almost as much as mothers. In fact, animals are more plentiful as metaphors than mothers, but only because there are more different kinds of animals than there are different kinds of mothers:
“When they arrived at a cross-roads, Mr. Croup would kneel, and find the nearest spot of blood, and they would follow it. They were like hyenas, exhausting their prey.”
Well, That Ain’t Right
A robust amount of the descriptive prose in this novel is put to the job of conveying information that, well, just ain’t right. Call it macabre or call it grotesque or simply identify it as Gaiman being Gaiman, but examples are abundant:
“His skin felt clammy, and his eyes felt like they had been put in wrong, while his skull gave him the general impression that someone had removed it while he had slept, and swapped it for one two or three sizes too small.”
