Understatement
The author uses metaphor early on as part of his strategy of building suspense. The story opens with a conversation between mother and young daughter who is excitedly playing a game. That “game” will turn out to be more than meets the eye and Bradbury lays down the foundation for this revelation with a bit of understatement ironic foreshadowing:
“Thank you, thank you!” cried Mink, and boom! she was gone, like a rocket.
Setting
The narrator does not directly address the time in which the story takes place, but rather hints allusively that it is at some point in the future. The opening paragraph mentions rockets and “beetle cars” with expository context. Shortly thereafter the longest paragraph yet encountered is devoted to a litany of descriptive prose situating just how mundane and ordinary this suburban setting is but with one exception. An almost offhand simile that again reveals this is not a story taking place today.
“Rockets hovered like darning needles in the blue sky.”
Literal Metaphor
Mink, the young girl playing the game, becomes the object through Bradbury plays a little game with figurative language. The 7-year-old is eager to the point of fidgety in her desire to get back to the game she is playing, but her mother insists on staying true to her routine which shall not be interrupted for any mere game. Lunch little Mink requires and so soup shall little Mink have. Mink’s response to his unnecessary maternal intrusion into her fun is intended literally but, of course, greeted as metaphor by her obliviously mother:
“This is a matter of life and death!”
“What’s lodge-ick?”
The conversation about this matter of life and death continues and Mink makes an inquiry of her mother. Her seven-year-old experience is not enough to understand even how to pronounce the word, much less know what it means. Her mother overlooks this however and instead provides a definition that situates its comfort entirely within simplistic metaphor rather than an exploration of genuine meaning. The answer to her daughter’s question is yet another example of the mother’s fallback position of patronizing her child rather than taking her rather strange questions seriously.
“Logic is knowing what things are true and not true.”
Zero Hour
The entire story moves toward the titular moment when the game becomes real to everyone. That revelation falls upon Mink’s mother with a metaphorical description that is among the finest sentences Bradbury ever constructed:
“She was babbling wild stuff now. It came out of her. All the subconscious suspicion and fear that had gathered secretly all afternoon and fermented like a wine in her.”
