An Expressive Aria (Simile)
"It was as if I traveled through the landscape with the sound of an expressive and intense aria playing in my ears" (89).
As the biologist hikes alone towards the lighthouse, this is how she describes her internal accompaniment. An aria is the music that accompanies a solo part in an opera, so the comparison emphasizes the biologist's isolation from the rest of her expedition party and the fact that she's acting alone.
Structures as Biological Entities (Metaphor and Simile)
"In that cocoon of timelessness, with the lighthouse seeming to remain distant no matter how long I walked, I had more time to think about the tower and our expedition" (90).
"But contemplating the sheer enormity of that idea on a macro level would have broken my mood like an avalanche crashing into my body" (90).
These figurative images both occur in the same passage as the biologist describes her hike away from the lighthouse. Both metaphors relate the experience in terms of natural phenomena, which harks to the larger theme of specialization and its effect on perspective.
Flimsy Gravestones (Metaphor)
"Those journals, flimsy gravestones, confronted me with my husband’s death all over again" (110).
Upon finding the midden full of notebooks, the biologist calls them "flimsy gravestones," because they serve as the only memorialization of the past explorers.
Lighthouse as Reliquary (Metaphor)
"Behind me lay the increasingly solemn silhouette of what was no longer really a lighthouse but instead a kind of reliquary" (138).
After finding the midden of journals, the biologist describes the lighthouse as a reliquary. Reliquaries generally contain the body part of a deceased saint; they are both art objects and holy objects and are cherished as containers of organic material that is directly linked to God. The lighthouse may not contain the bodies of all past explorers, but it does contain their aforementioned "flimsy gravestones" (110). These explorers who died in Area X are also known to be absorbed by Area X in death, which the biologist admits "is not the same thing here as back across the border" (144). The explorers live on in the landscape of Area X as saints are thought by Christians to live on through God. Through this reliquary metaphor, VanderMeer depicts Area X as a sacred presence in the world.
Mask Made of Skin/Discarded Shell of a Horseshoe Crab (Metaphor)
"But when after a moment nothing further happened, I shone my light on it again and saw it was a kind of tan mask made of skin, half-transparent, resembling in its way the discarded shell of a horseshoe crab" (140).
This likening of the disembodied face to a horseshoe crab shell further emphasizes the biologist's specific perspective and its tendency to relate her surroundings to natural phenomena. The image also desanctifies humanity and the most "human" element of our physiology, the face, by representing it as something as callously "discarded" as a horseshoe crab shell.
