Volcano of Silence (Metaphor)
Towards the end of the novel, the narrator describes the way in which mention of the riots disappeared from public discussion. He says: “By the end of January 1964 the riots had faded away from the pages of the newspapers, disappeared from the collective imagination of ‘responsible opinion’, vanished without leaving a trace in the histories and bookshelves. They had dropped out of memory into the crater of a volcano of silence.” This complex metaphor works well to characterize this unsettling quiet. The "crater" description makes it clear that the riots have vanished from view, while the word "volcano" suggests the volatility of the situation. Like a volcano, this silence does not suggest that things are truly peaceful, just that they are momentarily dormant.
Like a Toothbrush (Simile)
Earlier in the book, the narrator says that for his grandmother "time was like a toothbrush: it went mouldy if it wasn’t used. I asked her once what happened to wasted time. She tossed her small silvery head, screwed up her long nose and said: 'It begins to stink.'" What she means by this is that wasted time leads to a meaningless life. This underlines her belief that people need to always use their time purposefully. Otherwise, like a toothbrush, it loses its value and function.
Red Like Lipstick (Simile)
Ila informs the narrator one of the popular boys she goes to school with received an expensive car for his birthday. She says “his father gave him a BMW sports car for his birthday; he can’t drive it yet because he’s not old enough, but their chauffeur brought it around to the school one day. It’s red, like lipstick.” The comparison to lipstick gives a sense of the shade of red the car is while also emphasizing its dramatic and eye-catching appearance. The simile works to give a general sense of the boy's desire to be noticed, as well as the image Ila wants to project of him.
Like Veteran Soldiers (Simile)
The narrator attends a concert May is performing in while he is visiting London. He describes it as such: “All through that concert she, and most of the other musicians around her, performed with a bored mechanical precision, very much like veteran soldiers going through a familiar exercise at their sergeant-major’s command.” He compares her playing to the repetitive motions of a bored veteran soldier to highlight both her level of skill and her lack of passion in this particular performance. She has the dexterity to play the music well, but moves through it in a rote, unemotional way.
Looking-Glass Border (Metaphor)
At the end of the novel, the speaker uses a metaphor to describe how Calcutta and Dhaka were mirror images of each other on the day Tridib died. He writes that they were intertwined “so closely that I, in Calcutta, had only to look into the mirror to be in Dhaka; a moment when each city was the inverted image of the other, locked into an irreversible symmetry by the line that was to set us free—our looking-glass border.” He uses this metaphor to emphasize how his frightening day at school was a direct reflection of the violence occurring in Dhaka. The mirror works to underscore the uncanny coincidence of these closely connected events occurring in two distant cities.
