It Must be Love
The Young Woman has just found out that the supervisor in the office where she works is going to ask her to marry him. That very night she goes home to the apartment she shares with her mother and struggles to get some useful advice. Her central concern—posed as metaphor—foreshadows that this isn’t one of those happily-ever-after romance stories of the 1920’s. She has an urgent, pressing need to know something about married life:
“Your skin oughtn’t to curl—ought it—when he just comes near you – ought it?”
A Husband’s Advice
Still, she has a point. George is not exactly the biggest fish to land in the world. Consider his trite metaphor-rich “advice” to a wife demonstrating the effects of some serious postpartum depression:
“Start the up-hill climb!...I’ve been licked but I haven’t stayed licked! I’ve pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, and that’s what you’ve got to do!...you’ve got to brace up! Face the music! Stand the gaff! Take life by the horns! Look it in the face!”
The Pick-Up Line
If that’s the way George talks all the time, no wonder she is so susceptible to a pickup line that is hardly a work of creative genius itself. Nevertheless, it seals the deal for a bad boy Helen meets in a bar one. Afterwards, she confesses that the reason he scored was because he had a nice simile:
“Because you told me I looked like an angel to you! That’s why I came.”
The Priest’s Holey Prayer
In her prison cell in the final minutes leading to her execution, a priest is praying. There is something about the prayer that almost brings to mind her husband’s weak attempts to snap her out of her deep depression with his empty sermon on the power of positive thinking. The prayer may be more poetic in structure, but is ultimately every bit as devoid of help:
“I am like a night raven in the house. I have watched and become as a sparrow all alone on the housetop…My days have declined like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.”
Literal Metaphor
There exist some occasions in literature where a character says something that manages to be intended both literally and metaphorically. Such an example can be found near the end of this story when Helen takes the stand during her murder trial. The court reporter asks for the record where she lives. She answers, “In prison.” The defense attorney immediately clarifies that following her arrest, this is his client’s legal address. But by that point, of course, the audience understands that Helen has been living in prison all her life.
