The Natural and Unnatural
Within the natural world is found metaphorical imagery that which is not natural to it. Throughout these books are descriptions of climate and weather conditions into which are introduced concepts not natural to them, but instead placed there by the fertile figurative imagination:
“White mist climbed up from the ground around them, like the souls of the dead, curling.”
Personification
One of the more common types of metaphor that is found in this book as well as the series at large is the personification of emotions or anatomy. The interior mechanisms of existence of the mind and the body are often endowed with a sentient life of their own by the characters as they fall into contemplative moments:
“There was also an ache of fatigue inside him, growing stronger…His body wanted rest, but had forgotten how to find it.”
The Hero
Rand has been the heroic center tying all the various narrative threads together. As the story moves inexorably toward the climactic showdown between good and evil, Rand’s special qualities are made even more apparent throughout metaphorical imagery:
“He did not fear revealing these things. He had touched the True Power, and so the Dark One knew his heart. There were no surprises here, at least nothing that should have been a surprise.”
Viscerally Vivid
Some uses of the comparative quality of similes are far more visceral than others. While it is usually easy enough to make such metaphorical imagery vivid through the use of familiarity, a writer must sometime move beyond the routine to really punch home the visceral quality of the image he seeks to convey. There should be nothing at all familiar to the point of being mundane in the following example. If there is someone out there for whom it is overly familiar, chances are they aren’t the kind of person who spends a great deal of time reading fantasy novels anyway:
“Desperate act after desperate act. Killing as many as he could, like a screaming man clubbing wolves as they tore him to pieces, hoping to take at least one with him into the final darkness.
Proverbs and Maxims
Another oft-recurring type of metaphor found throughout the series is the assertion of wisdom in the form of a philosophical maxim. These proverbial nuggets of wisdom may, in fact, rank among the most dominant and omnipresent of all the figurative language in the books, including this one:
“A man who thinks all day about the catch he missed because of stormy weather ends up wasting time when the sky is clear.”
