It’s Not the Heat; It’s the Humidity
Sugar Beach is located in Liberia. Liberia is on the west coast of Africa. The narrator puts the reader right into the tangible reality of how this area of the world is probably quite different from their own through metaphor-rich imagery describing the first things that hit you upon landing on these shores. The first is the smell and the second is the heat:
“It is air so heavy that it weighs on your tongue, as if you can open your mouth and take a sip. It is a soup, a big hot pot of soupy air, fetid under the equatorial sun.”
Knoxville
The 1980 coup in Liberia forced the narrator’s family to flee the continent and they eventually wound up n the truly culture-clashing city of Knoxville, Tennessee. While still living at Sugar Beach, the trips to America had lent Knoxville an air of exoticism, but the permanent resettlement changed the perspective a good deal. It was now a place where the metaphor grew dark and depressing:
“…it now seemed like a place where I was trapped, a prison far from home.”
What May Seem Like Lazy Writing…Isn’t
People who are not writers use metaphors in their discourse every single day without really thinking of them as metaphors. This creates a kind of disconnect when they are used with an eye toward precision. One very common metaphor is to describe someone suddenly erupting in an inappropriately angry way using a metaphorical comparison to a bullet being fired. The narrator uses this common phrase upon returning to the post-coup land left behind which is now in the hands of Nigerian soldiers. The effect of using a mundane metaphorical phrase under situations which are far more tense than those in which it is usually engaged only serves to highlight the motivation of the author in relying on what could seem a rather lazy assertion otherwise:
“A hyper Nigerian soldier told Ishmael to open the car trunk. He asked Ishmael what was in my backpack, which was inside the trunk. Ishmael told him he didn’t know, that he should ask me. The Nigerian soldier went ballistic.”
Wal-Dron: Always No Prices
Uncle Waldron’s home is on the far side of Congo Town and that is considered the beginning of civilization in the Liberian region the narrator calls home. It is made quite clear that Uncle Waldron is smack in the middle of civilization: his home is described as a bachelor pad, equipped with things those on the other side Congo Town could never imagine. Things like a waterbed and a VCR. Such a place is deemed paradise for 20th century inhabitants:
“Going to Uncle Waldron’s house was like going to the store.”
Irony
A quick funny example of setting up an ironic twist with a metaphorical comparison is made during a description of a Sadie Hawkins Dance attended by the narrator. The focus of the irony is a man named Philip who it would seem clearly headed to the dance with a certain image of himself in mind that may not necessarily have been perceived as he expected:
“Philip had on tight white trousers, like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He prowled around the gym all night, not dancing much. He talked to his basketball buddies. I made a determined and quite good effort at not talking to him.”
