The Hours
In a novel filled with metaphorical language, one of the most exquisite is a riff on the sense of isolation that accompanies a person when he is deep in contemplation of the cruelty of the world around him and recognizes his own metaphysical lack of consequence to all those around him:
“That hour of the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan. Divinity and humanity then are equally willing that he should starve in the street for all that either will do for him.”
Mrs. Tartan
A robust description of the mother of his young beloved, Lucy, paints a literal portrait thusly: financially secure and more than willing to inform or remind people of that fact, but also charitable. Much more effective, however, is the engage of metaphor which makes her come much more alive using a fraction of the words:
“she was a match- maker--not a Lucifer match-maker--though, to tell the truth, she may have kindled the matrimonial blues in certain dissatisfied gentlemen's breasts.”
Mary Glendinning
Many of the novel’s characters are delineated through the use of metaphor, but perhaps none receives quite the lovingly poetic comparison as that which above all other descriptions gives insight into her character:
“through all the infinite traceries of feminine art, she evenly glowed like a vase which, internally illumi-nated, gives no outward sign of the lighting flame, but seems to shine by the very virtue of the exquisite marble itself”
Indeed, few character descriptions in the body of Melville’s work attains such aestheticism.
Ships
Pick up a novel, story or poem by Herman Melville and you’ve got a much better than average chance of reading a story that takes place on a ship or features sailors or seamen. This novel, however, is one of very infrequent Melville publications in which this is not true. Nevertheless, being a Melville work of some length, you have to expect that at some point a reference, allusion or bit of imagery will show up. And so here is one of the least complicated yet beautifully crafted metaphors in the book:
“His soul's ship foresaw the inevitable rocks, but resolved to sail on, and make a courageous wreck.”
"He felt as a moose, hamstrung."
This sentence comes in the midst of a long paragraph that is very densely packed with metaphor and imagery that includes the sailing metaphor mentioned which all comport as a revelation of the sentence ending the previous paragraph: “Pierre was solitary as at the Pole.” One suspects that a great many readers then and even more today may looked at the simile comparing Pierre to feeling a like a hamstrung moose with bewilderment. What exactly is this supposed to mean? It is a reference to the long-held understanding—which still remains open to debate—that the only effective way for a predator to take down a moose is by going low and attacking his legs, effectively causing a hamstring injury will debilitates him, thus making the moose essentially defenseless.
