Doom not Death
A curious instance recurs throughout the novel in which death is not a word mentioned directly, but rather is alluded to through metaphor. Elsewhere, however, death is freely tossed around. This metaphor seems to be particularly limited to execution; the kind of death that one knows is coming shortly:
“Warn my Parliament to bring me Norfolk’s doom before the sun rise again, else shall they answer for it grievously!”
Time Doesn't Just Heal
What is inordinately strange at first for Tom becomes less so as he gets more acclimated to the strangeness. The rough edges of the new and unfamiliar need only the whetstone of the days passing by:
“Time wore on pleasantly, and likewise smoothly, on the whole. Snags and sand- bars grew less and less frequent, and Tom grew more and more at his ease, seeing that all were so lovingly bent upon helping him and overlooking his mistakes.”
The Psychological State of London Weather
While still a pauper, Tom cannot find much romance at all in London’s notorious wet weather. It’s a hard knock life and the weather just seems to mock his state of mind:
“There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was murky; it was a melancholy day.”
Tom in the Twilight Zone
As the pauper plays out his princely duties, his conscience comes into conflict with his fortune at the sight of the doomed awaiting execution. He has just moved into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas…he has entered the twilight zone between what he is what he presumes to be:
“he could think of nothing but the scaffold and the grisly fate hanging over the heads of the condemned. His concern made him even forget, for the moment, that he was but the false shadow of a king, not the substance”
The Recognition Procession
Twain seems to reserve his greatest capacity for writing in rich metaphorical imagery for that moment in the narrative when it most necessary and efficient for conveying the profound sense of emotional trauma the pretender to the throne experiences. The description of the “Recognition Procession” as it continues following the moment when Tom has rejected his mother like Prince Hal rejects Falstaff is an edifice to the power of figurative language:
“The shining pageant still went winding like a radiant and interminable serpent down the crooked lanes of the quaint old city...but still the King rode with bowed head and vacant eyes, seeing only his mother’s face and that wounded look in it.”
