Pondering over (metaphor)
The narrator tells the story of Mr. Gessler and his brother with notes of sadness and melancholy. Only when the brothers had died, the narrator returned in memory to those days when they have been yet alive, but only after the death of Mr. Gessler, he, the narrator, ponders over the troubles and hardships of the shoes master. “These thoughts came to me later”, after the Mr. Gessler’s death, as the narrator assumes, but he remembers that “some inkling of the dignity of himself and brother haunted” him all the time, for to make boots, “such boots as he made - seemed to me then, and still seems to me, mysterious and wonderful.”
The atmosphere of the shop (metaphor, simile)
The narrator of the story remembers in details the shop and its atmosphere. He explains that the Gesslers’ shop was not that busy place one might think of, but it was always empty, and entering this shop might seem as if “entering the church and sitting on the single wooden chair”. The visitor has to wait awhile inhaling the “soothing smell of leather, which formed the shop”, before the face of Mr. Gessler or his brother “peer down … as if awakened from some dream of boots, or like an owl surprised in daylight and annoyed at this interruption”.
Sincere love (metaphor)
Mr. Gessler had once made the shoes for the narrator, but they had creaked. When the narrator told about this Mr. Gessler, he was astonished and could not believe it, but nevertheless asked the narrator to send those shoes back. “A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up in me, so well could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard which he would bend on them” – the mataphor shows how much love the master had put into his work.
Dreadful tone (metaphor)
The narrator dared once to enter the Mr. Gessler’s shop wearing the shoes which he had bought elsewhere. Mr. Gessler told that those shoes were not his with the “tone not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt, but there was in it something quiet that froze the blood”.
