Stars Metaphor
Richard observes that "it is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen." This is a metaphor for difficult times showing what people are truly made of, and for adversity enabling their strength of character to become more apparent.
Autumn Years Metaphor
Mary Anne remained beautiful in what Richard calls her "autumn years" which is a metaphor for the time in which a person's youth starts to lose its glow and the colors in a person's beauty start to fade. Everything about a person in their autumn years retains its loveliness but it is a time when things begin to wither not a time for renewal.
Precipice Simile
"For the last three years, MaryAnne had viewed herself as one helplessly stranded on the edge of a towering precipice"
MaryAnne likened herself to someone preparing to jump from a great height without a safety net because the anticipation of leaving David had made the act of leaving more terrifying than the unknown of what would come after; in the same way a person on a precipice finds the anticipation of jumping or falling more terrifying than the fall itself.
Broken Furniture Simile
Lawrence says that the Parkins don't need "an old, blind Negro Sutton' around the place like some piece of broken furniture" comparing himself to an old chair that is held onto for sentimental reasons but cannot be mended and had no real use or purpose in the home.
Rooms We Can't Enter Metaphor
David writes in his diary that "we all have rooms we lock and daren't visit, lest they bring pain." This is a metaphor for memories of events and experiences that we will not let our minds go back to because thinking about them again, or going back to the scene of the cause of the pain, will bring all of the pain and upset back again; the room is a metaphor for the memory or the place in the mind where the memory has been buried.
