Fifth Avenue
The novel opens with a metaphorical situating of Fifth Avenue as story of success and wealth that is only half-told. Fifth Avenue stretches, literally, well past that area which has claimed a place in American folklore as a wonderland paved with gold. It is not all glittery and as it carries out its path away from Central Park to Harlem, the truth comes into focus:
“You can see the Avenue change expression—blankness, horror, conviction. You can almost see it wag is head in self-commiseration.”
Passing
A theme explored in this novel that is common throughout much of the literature of the Harlem Renaissance, is that of “passing” and the difference in economic possibilities extended to those blacks of a light enough pigmentation to fool others into thinking they are white. A moment occurs in the novel when one character makes a statement to another that acts as a revelation of being among the fooled and this unwitting confession results in a particularly memorable bit of metaphorical imagery:
“The statement transfixed Miss Cramp like a lance, and the swift change of mien from complacency to unbelieving horror was so violent that Nora almost felt remorse at having occasioned it.”
Poetry in Metaphorical Motion
The thing about metaphor and similes is that engagement lends a certain poetic beauty to prose. It is much easier to accept in a novel for those who hate verse because it does not appear to explicitly “artsy.” It is, of course, but appearances mean a lot in the construction of images:
“Directly opposite loomed the Palisades, like a wide and gloomy black fortress, clear-limned against a sky dimly pale with an adolescent moon. Below, the dark water glittered a smile that derided the callow moon’s wooing.”
See? Put those exact phrases into a poem it seems “poetic” in the sense that drives a lot of readers away from verse. Stick into a regular paragraph of prose and somehow it doesn’t seem quite so fancy.
What is Jericho?
What is the metaphorical significance of the titular Biblical city and site of Joshua’s moment of greatness? It may be a symbolic thing, but it could not be explained much more literally:
“But we can’t help kidding ourselves sometimes, and we almost always kid ourselves about our Self. What is our Self, our knowledge of ourself, if not Jericho-chief city of every man’s spiritual Canaan?”
Darkness
Darkness is not just something you can depend to come around every single day. It almost as dependable to show up in novels of the 20th century as a metaphor. Probably—almost certainly, really—the most omnipresent and pervasive metaphor to be found in modern literature:
“It amazed Shine himself—amazed and chagrined him. He felt rather glad of the darkness outside—it was a sort of balm for his shame.”
