Trapped on an Island
The title character in “The Lady of the Sagas” dreams of being a heroine in a grand romantic saga, but instead finds herself a teacher in a school in a dreary little village. She sees the village in metaphorical terms:
“But whatever our town may have been like in saga times, it is no great shakes today. It seemed to Deirdre to be more like an island; a small island where you couldn’t walk a few hundred yards in any direction without glimpsing the sea, only that the sea was some watery view of pearly mountains and neglected fields with a red and blue cart upended beside a stack of turf. The islanders, except when they took a boat (which they kept on referring to as a car)”
Greasy Reality
The most commonly recurring motif in the use of metaphor in the works of O’Connor is the comparison of something beautiful to something ugly or vice versa. Most of his characters even look at an ugly world around them with the hope of finding something better or have their beautiful illusions destroyed by the ugliness of reality. Such is the case in the story “News for the Church.”
“She didn’t see his purpose; she only saw that he was stripping off veil after veil of romance, leaving her with nothing but a cold, sordid, cynical adventure like a bit of greasy meat on a plate.”
Father Fogarty
Father Fogarty is a character that appears in a number of different stories. In “Requiem” he is described in metaphorical language that suggests why he may be so popular with readers; or at least with the other characters appearing in his tales.
“A man with emotions cut too big for the scale of his existence, he was forever floundering in enthusiasms and disillusionments, wranglings and reconciliations; but he had a heart like a house, and almost before the door closed behind her, he was squeezing the old woman’s hand in his own two fat ones.”
An Irish Writer
O’Connor’s fiction is very much steeped in Ireland, but much of it transcends culture and national identities. On other occasions, however, his use of literary techniques betrays him. The following is an example of engaging metaphorical imagery that plays a lot better in Dublin, Ireland than Dublin, Georgia or Dublin, Texas:
“Afterwards, whenever Irishtown played at Redmondite demonstrations, my father accompanied them, but the moment the speeches began he retreated to the edge of the crowd, rather like a pious Catholic compelled to attend a heretical religious service, and stood against the wall with his hands in his pockets.”
Humorous Comparison
Then there are those times when O’Connor turns to a simile to take advantage of its greatest power: condensing the words needed to effectively describe things down to the time it takes portray an easily grasped image. Like, for instance, this humorous condensation of one woman’s feeling of being nine months pregnant and close to the delivery:
“She said it made her feel like a yacht that had been turned into a cargo boat.”
