Rayna
The metaphorical description provided by Day of the beautiful and spirited young woman named Rayna Simons is sadly at odds with the tragically earth death of Rayna Prohme from encephalitis at the age of thirty-six. The metaphor-rich portrait of college-age Rayna leaves no doubt as to why she was drawn to her socialist comrade:
“a young girl, slight and bony, deliciously awkward and yet unself-conscious, alive_ and eager in her study. She had bright red curly hair. It was loose enough about her face to form an aureole, a flaming aureole, with sun and brightness in it. Her eyes were large, reddish brown and warm, with interest and laughter in them.”
The Pacifist
Day was not just a socialist and not just a Catholic, but a pacifist. A committed pacifist, she was even willing to be arrested rather than follow law compelling citizens to enter fallout shelters during civil defense practice runs. Day’s review of military engagement is such an elemental part of her overall social construction that one of the chapter titles says it all through metaphor:
“War is the Health of the State”
The Peril of Crowds
As someone who bore witness to the violence that springs up almost organically out of peaceful demonstration, Day’s views on the potential danger inherent in any crowd of like-minded people should be abided. She calls upon the words of another with experience when forming a metaphorical image of this lurking danger:
“It is a mysterious thing, this feeling of violence in a mob. Eugene Debs said that even a friendly mob has the smell of the beast.”
Peter Maurin
Dorothy Day is almost always introduced as co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. But who is the other partner in this co-founding enterprise? His name is Peter Maurin described variously as a theologian, philosopher, activist and mystic. But Day reserves for him a poetic metaphorical title that rises above others:
“Peasant of the pavements.”
Day’s Opiate Crisis
Day was a socialist and a practicing Catholic. This situation put her directly at odds with Marx’s famous dictum about religion, opiates and the masses. It took time, but she finally managed to reconcile the conflict and the result is one of the metaphorical highlights—that is to say a highlight involving metaphor—of the book:
“I wanted to have nothing to do with the religion of those whom I saw all about me. I felt that I must turn from it as from a drug. I felt it indeed to be an opiate of the people and not a very attractive one, so I hardened my heart”
transformed into
“Then I thought suddenly, scornfully, `Here you are in a stupor of content. You are biological. Like a cow. Prayer with you is like the opiate of the people.’ And over and over again in my mind that phrase was repeated jeeringly, `Religion is the opiate of the people.’"
