Character Description
Similes are one of the bona fide lifesavers for writers when it comes to describing their characters. If you were to somehow remove the ability for fiction writers to use similes as a means of delineating character, well, let’s just say the entire reading experience would be nothing at all like the thing we know:
“Charlotte had thick black eyebrows, but she also had delicate features and beautiful skin. She could have made a favorable impression on someone if she hadn’t acted as though at any moment the city was going to step on her.”
Self-Reflection
First-person narration also offers an excellent opportunity for metaphorical imagery in the service of self-reflection. Of course, this particular narrator is not like most people, so his utilization of the tool takes things to a completely different level:
“Swept along by the currents of my own ambitions and commitments, my daily life laid the groundwork for the grace of forgetting”
“Tinker is the apple.”
Okay, that metaphor up there is pretty self-explanatory, right? No? Well, the apple metaphor traces directly back to a strange conversation that took place just before this assertion. The conversation is about how red apples grown in America started out as fruit too bitter to eat. It was only after generations of applied grafting that the red delicious became worthy of its name. (Provided you luck into one that isn’t too mealy.) So, basically, the metaphor means that this guy Tinker…”ensured his survival while others have languished by learning how to appeal to the likes of you and me.” Yeah, all in in all it is a pretty awful self-deprecating extended metaphor for the narrator to make.
The Big Apple
As opposed to just being the apple, New York is the Big Apple, of course. But that is just one of many metaphors that is attributed to the city that never sleeps and the people who ensure that it never sleeps. There have been many before and there will be many after, so count this as just one more metaphorical image in a population that matches the city it describes:
“But if New York was a many-cogged machine, then lack of judgment was the grease that kept the gears turning smoothly for the rest of us.”
