Foreshadowing
There is one particular unusual metaphorical thought expressed in this World War II-era play that some might suggests foreshadows the zeitgeist of post-Trump America. The idea that free speech has been curtailed to the point of taking away one’s very liberty is a ridiculous notion, of course, but still there is something to be said for the underlying idea being expressed in this little snatch of dialogue.
Mother: I’d rather you didn’t speak of that.
Martha: Really one would think that nowadays some words burn your tongue.
Metaphorical Now, but…
A discussion of the heat of the sand on the beach warmed by the sun enough to burn the soles of your feet leads to a metaphorical discussion involving souls and sunlight that in the age before global warming was strictly limited to the figurative. A hundred years from now or so, however, and this observation about the power of the sun may no longer qualify purely as metaphorical, at least relative to the power of the sun:
“I read in a book that it even burns out people’s souls and gives them bodies that shine like gold but are quite hollow, there’s nothing left inside.”
Martha’s Confession
The characters are not shy about divulging their innermost thoughts, but they do have a habit of expressing those confessions couched in the ambiguity of metaphor. Metaphor is good for the soul—no, wait, that’s confession—but sometimes things get little murky when the confession is hidden within a thorny nest of imagery:
“All my life was spent waiting for this great wave that was to lift me up and swept me far away, and now I know it will never come again. I am doomed to stay here with all those other countries, other nations, on my left and my right, before me and behind.”
Darkness
If you seek it, it will come: darkness as metaphor. One cannot avoid it in literature since the around the turn of the 20th century. Darkness is the defining metaphor of the modern world and even a talent as huge as Camus is resistant to its lure:
“But fix this in your mind; neither for him nor for us, neither in life nor in death, is there any peace or homeland. For you’ll agree one can hardly call it a home, that place of clotted darkness underground, to which we go from here to feed blind animals.”
Tautologically Speaking
The language in this play is not direct and realistic, but constructed with the meaning wrapped deep inside layers of verbal disconnect. The point is to get audience member to use their head rather than simply relying on the easier methodology of emotional connection. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes the metaphor is bound within a tautological straitjacket that provides almost no contextual clues:
“Innocence has the sleep that innocence deserves.”
