"Mom was a good egg."
This particular metaphor will be instantly familiar to older readers, but perhaps bewildering to younger ones. The phrase that someone “was a good egg” means someone who is trustworthy and reliable. It actually arose as an alternative to the somewhat older implication an unreliable person is a “bad egg.”
Tarzaning
In the story “Victory Lap” the narrator describes a house in which one of the rules forbade walking around in bare feet. Then one day the mother and father return home to a son who has removed his socks and “find him Tarzaning around.” There is metaphor here in the image of the character acting like the nearly-naked king of the jungle in his rapturous anti-social behavior in defiance of authority.
Victorian Garden
A prison experiment involving drugs causes a prisoner to have deeply realistic hallucinations of a garden. The more of the drug that gets into his system, the sharper the focus of the image. At one point his description moves into the sphere of metaphor and ironically, perhaps, the image of the garden will become even clearer to some readers:
“It was like any moment you expected some Victorians to wander in with their cups of tea.”
Switzerlandish
A simile is one of the most efficient ways to convey imagery. Even when the thing is being compared to what essentially amounts to a metaphor itself. After all, what is Switzerlandish but a figurative abstraction? And yet, when compared to something more literal, nearly everyone knows exactly what Switzerlandish means in a description like this:
“He came out of the woods to the prettiest vista he knew. The pond was a pure frozen white. It struck him as somewhat Switzerlandish.”
Donfrey's Wife
Donfrey’s wife—which is how she always referred to in multiple references—is a pretty important character in the story “Al Roosten.” At one time, Donfrey’s wife was beautiful, but time has passed and she is now, Roosten must admit, “an overgroomed scarecrow.”
