“Woman breed baby, but man can only make Frankenstein.”
This is an intensely masculine novel and one that associates masculinity with violence. At the same time, however, it is also a strangely “gay novel” in the sense of homosexuality runs rampant through the culture and characters, though not necessarily explicit. The ultimate effect of this is a novel in which women are marginalized in a world that seeks constantly to replicate its patriarchal ideology. Taken together, this particular metaphor about the consequence of patriarchal domination can be interpreted in a number of different ways.
“Jamaicans are so unflappable, they might as well be Minnesotans.”
One gets the feeling that this particular metaphorical image resonates more strongly with Jamaicans or those from Minnesota, but then again, who really knows? For the average reader, this is an assertion that gains its power from the comedic element of “say what, now?” Sometimes similes are like that. They don’t have to actually make sense as long as they seem to make sense.
“Ghetto is a smell.”
This assertive description of the characteristics of the ghetto is itself a metaphor, but one that explodes on impact. As soon as it is asserted, the explosion that follows is a litany of imagery based on metaphorical evidence of the smells associated: “baby power women wear on their chests…rawness of recently slaughtered goat…sour chemicals in detergent.”
Reel Men
Amongst all the confusion of homosexuality and masculinity can be found confused ideas over the representation of masculinity. It is not limited to this situation, of course; many people have confused the actor with the role they play:
“my father fight, fight them like a man, even punch them like John Wayne in a movie, like a how real man supposed to fight.”
Metaphor Hates Symbol
The use of a metaphor is engaged early on as something of a foreshadowed warning device against reading too broadly into the characters and events of the story. The metaphor takes to task the concept of humanity being distilled of its unique qualities to become merely a hazy symbolic shadow of what it was:
“That’s what happens when you personify hopes and dreams in one person. He becomes nothing more than a literary defice.”
