Godric
Early on, Godric has fun with wordplay in an example of the novel’s preoccupation with language games. In explaining his name, he commingles metaphor with satirical gibberish.
“God’s wreck I be, it means. God’s wrecked Godric for his sins. Or Godric’s sins have made a wreck of God.”
Street Philosophy
A priest named Tom Ball outlines a philosophy of life to Godric which can essentially be attributed to the novel as a whole. This philosophy is outlined in the simplest and most accessible of metaphorical imagery:
“This life of ours is like a street that passes many doors…every day’s a door and every night. When a man throws wide his arms to you in friendship, it's a door he opens same as when a woman opens hers in wantonness. The street forks out, and there's two doors to choose between. The meadow that tempts you rest your bones and dream a while. The rack ribbed child that begs for scraps the dogs have left. The sea that calls a man to travel far. They all are doors, some God's and some the Fiend's. So choose with care which ones you take, my son, and one day who can say you'll reach the holy door itself.”
John the Baptist
Godric is a dream. Literally. He has many dreams over the course of the book and in some he is visited by John the Baptist. The monk supposedly responsible for writing Godric’s biography inquires of Godric what the famous Biblical figure is like when he appears in dreams to which the response is surprisingly metaphorical:
“Something between a goat and a Jew.”
Metaphor as Character Insight
The author also engages simple descriptive metaphor to create a shorthand approach to delineating character develop. Such as that moment of universality when you realize you have said something that you really only meant to think and must now starting thinking much faster on your feet:
“My tongue has been my only blade so long, it’s oversharp. Pay me no mind.”
The Fall of Rome
A pilgrimage to Rome becomes a massive disappointment, a peek into the consequences of corruption of men and power. The fall of the once mighty center of the world is made tangible through unadorned, straightforward metaphor that says it all:
“Rome was goats and owls where once great Caesar's palace stood.”
