Incredulity
One character reads from a letter to another and the news contained in the letter causes the other person “incredulously” inquire as to the author. The author in this case decides to build upon the incredulous reaction with a metaphorical imagery that effectively drives home just how deep the incredulity really goes.
“It was like a weird nightmare. It was like finding out that an incurable strain of insanity pervaded the family, an intangible horror that swayed and taunted beyond the grasp of reaching fingers.”
Contradiction
A woman is described in the act of washing down a vegetable stand: her arms are “thin.” Immediately, the author moves from bare description to forceful metaphor to reveal information that possibly contradicts the sense a reader may initially have had about the woman:
“There was a power in the wiry, brown arms, a hard, blind, unreckoning force which coursed through veins of tough bamboo.”
He's got What in his Pants?
A shock of recognition as a son realizes for the first time that his father acts like a nervous man nearly all the time. But it is this moment in the present at the time of recognition that cries out for the clarification of the comparison through simile:
“Here he was, round and fat and cheerful-looking and, yet, he was going incessantly as though his trousers were crawling with ants.”
And Here’s the Darkness
Start paying very special attention to something quite specific in your readings over the new few months. If possible, make a note of every time you come across a metaphorical passage about “darkness.” If the fiction is post-19th century, the average reader may give up on the note-taking part after two or three books. Darkness is a metaphorical image that writers born in the 20th century just can’t seem to resist. Unfortunately, most of those other examples are not nearly as powerfully emotional as this one. Okada comes unusually close to taking the overused trope to another level with this perfectly constructed sentence:
“The mother uttered a single, muffled cry which was the forgotten spark in a dark and vicious canyon and, the spark having escaped, there was only darkness, but a darkness which was now darker still, and the meaning of her life became a little bit meaningless.”
Gambling
Like darkness, the world of gambling is like a shiny lure enticing writers to dive into the deeper recesses of metaphorical imagery. It is tough to come up with something new, but Okada manages to do it here as well with a magnificent comparison that is revealing of the physicality of the casino table:
“A few were betting dimes and quarters, feeling their luck with the miserliness of the beginner who does not yet fully understand the game or the strained impulses within his young body.”
