A Mean Swindle
The book begins with a direct address to the reader which is partially about the very act of reading itself. At one point, the narrator metaphorically describes a certain act as a swindle that is as bad as anything described in one of his books. As far as swindles go, it seems to be very commonly perpetrated. He writes “You see, there are people who steal a free read as sparrows pick at a meal, and some who read books here and there and then piece the story together; and this is a great pity because they criticize the book even though it hasn't cost them anything; which is a mean swindle”
The Ugliest Horse in the World
When a carnival comes to town the narrator describes riding on a horse. The figurative language the author engages is robust with similes making comparisons designed to intensify a sense that the animal is extraordinarily unattractive. In fact, the similes used to describe the horse very successfully convey the driving idea that this may be the ugliest horse in the world. He writes that “It had haunches like a monkey's, precious little tail and a neck longer than a camel's. It had only one eye in its head and that was all filmed over with white, like a hard-boiled egg.”
King of the Beggars
A swindler earning the metaphorical title “beggars’ king” is also the recipient of a simile designed intentionally to engender in the reader a sense of physical repulsion. The imagery created in this passage is dependent upon an immediate distaste for the medical condition known as a hernia which is characterized by physically unpleasant symptoms. This example qualifies as a standard fate of the use of metaphorical imagery throughout the novel in that as a whole, this story is not a portrait of beauty: “He had a huge false hernia and used to tie a rope tight round his upper arm so that it looked as though his hand was all swollen up, as well as paralysed and inflamed at the same time.”
Proverbial Adages
Those short pithy little sayings that are intended to engender lessons in morality tend to be expressed through metaphor rather than through more explicitly literal language. Such ambiguity allows for a broader interpretation of the lesson they teach. For instance, this metaphor seems to be a simple assertion of fact, but lying beneath that assertion is the very ambiguous definition of what exactly qualifies as a definition of idleness: “You know idleness is the root of evil.”
