“It felt like a threat.”
The question here is what “felt like a threat.” But the even bigger aspect of this than the “what” is the who behind his simile. The “what” that is being compared to a threat is spelled out explicitly: “You spend a lot of time in Montclair, don’t you? Up on South Fullerton Avenue? He then stated the exact address of a law school classmate of mine, a home at which I did indeed spend a considerable amount of time.” Now, admittedly, this may not seem like much of a threat on the surface. But it is the kind of information that in the wrong hands could very much take on that feeling. The wrong hands being, for instance—since this is New Jersey—a reputed mob boss. Or, likewise, as in this particular case, the Mayor of Newark.
The Boarding House
Booker is, of course, well-known and famous for making his political reputation on issues related to housing. So it should come as little surprise that metaphors related to housing pepper the text. Not all, however, are related to housing purely form a political standpoint. Some are quite personal:
“I was renting a room in a boardinghouse in the community. It was a redbrick house built in 1871, and I was in a room in the back of the house that was about ten feet by ten feet with windows that looked out on the backyard. My room was old and run-down. The whole place felt frail, as though if I jumped up and down too much on my floor I would fall through.”
High Noon in Garden Spires
Garden Spires is a housing project that Booker describes as being like a drive-through for drugs. Traffic so busy that one didn’t even need to get out of the car to get their hit. A bad situation and dangerous place. One day things go from bad to really terrible when the drug dealers attack the security guards and Booker gets a desperate phone call with an imperative to hep and a metaphor that put it is int perspective:
“it is the Wild Wild West out here! The Wild Wild West.”
Mayor Sharpe James
An embrace between Booker and Mayor Sharpe James produces a sensory connection that results in one of the most intimate engagements with metaphor in the entire book. It is perhaps a little surprising or unusual, but most can probably relate quickly enough:
“It may sound strange, but I remember in that embrace smelling him. It was the closest he and I had ever been and I breathed the moment in deeply. He smelled familiar, like the older men in my family. I don’t know if it was his cologne or aftershave or what, but his smell was like family.”
And it was Known as Newark
As a former Mayor of the city who made the leap to the U.S. Senate, Booker will also be inextricably linked with the city of Newark. But the linkage goes much deeper metaphorically than it does literally. Newark for Booker is not just a city, but a mythical land of enchantment; his own Emerald City in in the land of Oz.
“Not long before, the view at the end of my well-lit path had been of a dark forest. Suddenly, I saw a way forward… That place was Newark, New Jersey.”
