Physical Description
Similes prove especially useful for writers looking to convey a physical description quickly and without sparing excess word count. Just one precisely modulated comparison manifested in a few words or an entire phrase can do what an entire paragraph of description not grounded in comparison would take:
“Before entering the chapel she had removed her black apron, and her gray dress stood out against the freshly polished benches. Her cowl was so tight that it wrinkled her face, making her look like a withered apple.”
Personifying the Abstract
A common metaphorical device is to lend human traits to abstracts concepts. One particular favorite for writers is sleep; its aura of mystery as to purpose makes it ready-made to develop into some sort of sentient being:
“Sometimes sleep attacked me suddenly, and I would plunge into darkness. Sleep would seize me and hurl me into oblivion. And then—the brutal awakening when the horrible sound of the morning bell would fall upon my ears like pellets of ice!”
Bread
Just a little more than halfway through the novel, bread-baking becomes of vital significance. For a good ten pages or so, it seems as though the entire world revolves around this bread. It is the “bread of sand” and the “bread of drudgery.” But when the big moment comes and the bread is finally tasted, metaphor is used to fully put that bread right into the hands of the reader, making it feel almost tangibly real:
“As she drew out the first round loaf of bread from the oven, Om el Kher said: `It is as rounded as goat’s skin and as light as the summer breeze. Taste it. You will like it.’
The bread was like a golden balloon which collapsed when I bit into it. I enjoyed the acrid taste.”
The Blind Man
Like the bread, a blind man also plays a significance role in the narrative. He enters much earlier than the bread, stays longer and exits later, however. His presence is also invested with greater mystery to the point where at times he almost seems to exist entirely on a metaphorical plane:
“I thought of nothing else on the way back. I imagined him going forth with slow deliberate footsteps as though he were bearing the fate of the village. With his large white turban which shone like a jewel, a crown of linen, and his smooth face, he seemed like a king.”
A Stranger Called Happiness
Happiness was so long absent from the existence of the narrator that when it comes it comes it takes on the aspect of metaphorical being. So complete is this construction of happiness as more than a mere state of emotion, but a state of being, that the description intensifies almost to a level that sounds like this emotional stranger just newly met is actually a new physical presence in the home:
“`This is happiness.’ Every minute it was new. So different from the treasures one hides in dark boxes, believing them to be life insurance. I counted my happiness like the beads of a rosary, turning it over and over in my hands.”
