Rotting From Insomnia (Metaphor)
Early in the play, Harry and Jackson have a gallows-humor exchange about suicide while Jackson tries simply to serve Harry his breakfast. Rather than accept the food, Harry ignores Jackson's offer and continues conversing, explaining that he's "rotting from insomnia." In this metaphor, Harry uses dramatic language to describe himself as decomposing while still alive. In reality, his lack of sleep means he is dealing with fatigue and an impaired mental state.
The Sun Suck a Crab Shell (Metaphor)
In Act Two, Harry explains that his desire to stage a pantomime stems from his fear of going mad from boredom. Jackson disagrees that boredom is the problem, saying, "No, is loneliness that sucking your soul as dry as the sun suck a crab shell." In this comment, Jackson uses a metaphor to describe the process of sunlight drying a crab shell through evaporation as a personified sun literally sucking the moisture from the crab.
You Make Your Car Nervous (Metaphor)
When discussing Harry's personality quirks and unaddressed emotional issues, Jackson says, "You drive so careful you make your car nervous." In this metaphor, Jackson highlights Harry's lasting trauma at having lost his son in a car accident by suggesting that Harry drives cautiously enough to induce nervousness in his car—an inanimate object incapable of human emotion. Jackson does not believe the car literally feels nervous.
A Mole Hill Out of a Mountain (Metaphor)
At the end of the play, Jackson helps Harry work through the unexpressed grief he has been carrying since the death of his son and the loss of his wife. When Jackson asks if he is okay, Harry minimizes his feelings by saying, "Things like this have happened before, and they can happen again." Jackson comments, "You making a mole hill out of a mountain, sir. But I think I follow you." In this metaphor, Jackson inverts the turn of phrase "making a mountain out of a mole hill," used to describe a situation in which someone reacts in a disproportionately dramatic way to a minor inconvenience. In Jackson's inverted metaphor, he suggests that Harry is attempting to reduce a tragedy to something trivial.
Palms Like Silent Sentinels (Simile)
In the dramatic monologue that Harry writes in the voice of Robinson Crusoe, Harry references the island landscape Crusoe shipwrecks on: "The ferns, the palms like silent sentinels, the wide and silent lagoons that briefly hold my passing, solitary reflection." In the simile "palms like silent sentinels," Harry compares towering palm trees to soldiers who stand guard without speaking a word.
