Cage (Metaphor)
The author says that Tereza’s body was a cage before she met Tomas, and “inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought, and marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.” Thus Kundera manages to depict Tereza’s essence more deeply: her soul’s “closure” in her body until Tomas freed it.
Nailing to eternity (Simile)
The narrator says that if our lives repeat an infinite number of times, “we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross.” Thus he shows how terrifically strange this would be for people, how awful torture it would be.
Camp of bodies (Metaphor)
Tereza's mother “insisted her daughter remain with her in the world of immodesty, where youth and beauty mean nothing, where the world is nothing but a vast concentration camp of bodies, one like the next, with souls invisible.” Naming the world “a concentration camp of bodies” Tereza shows her attitude to her mother’s “philosophy”: she “votes” for personalities, for creativity, but not for uniformity.
A child in a bulrush basket (Simile)
When Tomas got acquainted with Tereza, “she seemed a child to him, a child someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent downstream for Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed.” Here the author alludes to the Biblical story about Moses, who was also put in a basket and sent downstream. And in this story Moses was saved by another person and became a famous man, prophet. Using comparison with this child, the author shows that Tomas must also save Tereza somehow.
