Polite to a fault (Metaphor)
This metaphor expresses Edward's attitude to his wife, although he was not agree with her decision to have a dinner on the terrace, because for him it was too cold to eat outside. It was not a compromise, he just listened to Florence and wanted to cater all her demands and wishes even if they didn’t coincide with his.
Giddy plans in hazy future (Metaphor)
Edward and Florence were young and crazily in love; they didn’t have any experience in relationship and all they wanted was just to be together forever and ever. And they had so many plans “giddy plans, heaped up before them in the hazy future”. This metaphor highlights the lack of experience of the characters and their uncertainty. They have to live like adults but they are so childish that it will be pretty hard to be mature and responsible for themselves and by themselves.
Giddy plans as richly tangled as the early-summer flora of the Dorset coast (Simile)
This gorgeous and quite picturesque simile expresses the beauty of the youth as well as its “greenness”. The future of just married couple is foggy and unclear for them, they don’t know what they will do and how they will live but still they have some plans which, as they think, will help them not to get lost in this big and severe world, where everything is so complicated and uncertain: “where and how they would live, who their close friends would be, his job with her father’s firm, her musical career and what to do with the money her father had given her, and how they would not be like other people, at least, not inwardly”.
Youth – the social encumbrance (Metaphor)
The 1960s was a period, or “the era”, as the narrator says, when to be young was a drag in socializing process “a mark of irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition” because young people were lost, they didn’t have any certain goals in life and nobody protected them. It was the strict time with severe rules when walking on air was considered as something inappropriate and futile. Hence, this metaphor is used for expressing the idea of youth as a drawback but not as the best period in human life as it was always considered.
Marriage – beginning of a cure (Metaphor)
This metaphor is interconnected with the previous one, where the concept of youth was offset and this time was considered as something on the edge between childhood and adult life: being young was like being sick – lost and uncertain in tomorrow. And there was a cure from this “illness” – the marriage as one of the first and necessary steps of mature person. So, young people married early, despite the fact that they knew nothing about what the marriage is and what to do next. The vivid prove of this we can observe in the story, when the narrator tell us that Edward proposed Florence in the minute of desperate passion when his desire to have her was so strong that he couldn’t pull himself together anymore.
