Insults
Some of the greatest insults and offensive commentary ever made about one group of people are metaphors disguised as abusive humor. Most insult humor, in fact, is constructed upon metaphor. Because, of course, metaphorical imagery is a great way to hide ignorance of actual specific facts:
“She knows the joke about how Indians are crabs in a bucket, always pulling down the one that’s about to crawl out, but she thinks it’s more like they’re old- time plow horses, all just walking straight down their own row, trying not to see what’s going on right next to them.
Verbifying
One particularly interesting and creative use of metaphor that pops up every now and then in the book takes the form of a making a verb out of a noun. It helps, of course, to get the pop culture reference, otherwise the whole concept just kind of falls apart:
“Lewis finds the fourteen-foot aluminum ladder under boxes in the garage, Three Stooges it into the backyard”
The United States Post Office
The ironically named Lewis Clarke is situated as the least “Indian” of the four main characters. Even his name attests to this recurring aspect of his character. Life choices lead him from taking leave of the reservation, marrying a white woman, and finding gainful employment with the United States Postal Service. The post office is the oldest continually operating government agency in United States—regardless of what the U.S. Marshall Service claims—and as such there is really no existing place of employment that is more metaphorically non-Indian.
Dust in the Wind
A particularly gruesome metaphor is used to describe a very special brownish-grey dust falling over Lewis. Of course, one should keep in mind that the metaphor is actually also quite literal in a way: it is estimated that about seventy-five percent of all dust in the home is comprised of human skin. It is the sugary part that is pure metaphor:
“The dust is like ash, is like confectioner’s sugar if confectioner’s sugar were made from rubbed-off human skin.”
Simplicity
Not all the metaphorical imagery in the book treads around the more creative and imaginative type. The author is also not afraid to simply let simplicity in the form of simile do the job when required:
“The foreman interviewing him had been thick and windburned and sort of blond, with a beard like a Brillo pad.”
