“skin like yellow satin”
The protagonist of the novel is a light-skinned woman of mixed racial heritage and much of the narrative is related thematically in some way to that fact. One of the very engagements of figurative language is used to portray the particularities of the pigmentation of Helga Crane’s skin by using a basis of comparison that makes it very clear exactly what the hue resembled.
“The temper of the morning’s interview rose before her like an ugly mutilated creature crawling horribly over the flying landscape of her thoughts.”
This narrative prose by utilizes a keenly composed and quite specific simile for dual purposes. The obvious one is that the portrait of a memory one wishes fervently to forget or redo is made sensuously palpable through the horrifying literalness of the imagery. More subtly, the reader is able to penetrate into the mind of the character recalling this memory by associating the ability of create this imagery in her mind without directly engaging that mind through direct omniscience. This narrative prose by utilizes a keenly composed and quite specific simile for dual purposes. The obvious one is that the portrait of a memory one wishes fervently to forget or redo is made sensuously palpable through the horrifying literalness of the imagery. More subtly, the reader is able to penetrate into the mind of the character recalling this memory by associating the ability of create this imagery in her mind without directly engaging that mind through direct omniscience.
Naxos
One of the central settings of the novel is rural Alabama school for Africa-Americans said to be based at least in part on the Tuskegee Institute. Just as Helga often feels out of step due to her bi-racial heritage, so does she view herself as culturally out of step with the method of education in place at Naxos. This leads her to use a particularly robust and meaningful simile to put her feelings toward the school into metaphorical context:
“It’s hardly a place at all. It’s more like some loathsome, venomous disease.”
Harlem
From Alabama, Helga makes her way first to Chicago and then Harlem. Harlem is portrayed with much more vivid imagery than the rural area around the school and even the Midwestern metropolis. One night she literally descends down “a furtive, narrow passage, into a vast subterranean room” where she is met with the sensual rhythms of jazz, the harsh glare of artificial light, the brilliant colors of men and women decked out in their finery as they dance and swing and drink Prohibition alcohol. A smile crosses her lips as she realizes that metaphorically she has descended into
“one of those places characterized by the righteous as a hell.”
She's come a long way, but she's only halfway done with her travels.
A Copenhagen State of Mind
One of the most unusual utilizations of metaphor in in the novel is the Helga’s description of herself once she leaves Harlem behind to settle in the next new location on her experiential trek through life. By now, Helga has grown and matured and seen quite a bit of life and Denmark represents not just a geographical setting, but a philosophical one as well. Her entire outlook undergoes a change which she describes in a strangely formulated metaphor invoking not a noun as is usually the case, but a verb.
“Incited. That was it, the guiding principle of her life in Copenhagen. She was incited to make an impression, a voluptuous impression. She was incited to inflame attention and admiration.”
