“A light can go out in the heart.”
This plaintive, wistful observation which occurs in what is perhaps Ford’s most famous short story, “Communist” could well serve as a metaphorical tag for much of his work. It speaks to the overarching thematic presence in the stories of Ford of emotional isolation and despondency it engenders.
What Is Love
Another quite useful and metaphor found in “Communist” that is so very applicable to so many of young characters searching for light in the darkness of adults around them or adults for whom the darkness is starting to become a permanent state of affairs.
“…love is a reliable commodity and even that is not always true, as I have found out.”
Knowing but not Knowing
Another common theme running throughout the stories is the young, searching characters in Ford’s stories seem on the verge of knowing something without fully knowing it. They are mature enough to intuit, but not quite sure enough to grasp precise details. As a result, metaphors and similes abound in which comparisons are made without being complete or made with confidence. In “Optimists” a character muses about his father:
“He was like a gambler, though I did not even know what it meant to be a gambler then.”
Character Description
Nothing beats a simile for getting to the point when it comes to character description. One effective simile can paint a portrait in a single sentence that might otherwise take up an entire paragraph. The comparison becomes even more effective when the simile is controverted such as this one.
“The camouflage paste on her face made her look a little like a clown, but you could tell she had a nice face.”
Thematic Metaphor
In the title story of this collection, the author burns an image into the consciousness of the reader using metaphor that will become a thematic thread tying the narrative together. The reader is not likely to recall the car from this metaphorical language so much as the imagery of an incandescent sun exploding over the river and the inherent symbolism of the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The car, however, will prove most significant in the sun setting on the life a man for whom the rainbow leads nowhere.
“we made love on the seat of the car in the Quality Court parking lot just as the sun was burning up on the Snake River, and everything seemed then like the end of the rainbow.”
