“Election Night Ritual”
Warren recounts, “It was November 8, 2016.The polls were about to close in Massachusetts and we were about to start our Election Night ritual: clicking back and forth between news reports and binge-watching something really fun on television. I had my laptop so I could check on the local races, and my phone so, assuming the night went well, I could make some congratulatory calls.” The metaphorical ritual makes the events of the election night predictable. Warren’s focus on the election night is on the results. All her engagements are ritual-like because they enable her to be updated with election.
Moon
Warren recounts, “This was my last year of high school, and it looked like everyone at Northwest Classen had a future, everyone except me. All my friends were talking about college. They went on nonstop as they compared schools and sororities and possible majors. No one seemed to worry about what it would cost. Me? I didn't have the money for a college application, much less tuition and books. Some days it seemed like college might as well have been on the moon." Warren uses the metaphorical moon to underscore her situation as a sixteen year old girl. She was not guaranteed of attending college due to her parents' financial situation. Although she does some lowly jobs, they do not offer sufficient income that would fund her college education.
Warren expounds, “And that’s how I’d always remembered this moment: my daddy telling me to hang on, that no matter how bad it feels, life gets better. I had carried that story in my pocket for decades. It was how I made it through the painful parts. Divorce. Disappointments. Deaths. Whenever things got really tough, I would pull out that story and hold it in my mind.” Here Warren is referring to the moment that her father told her “Life gets better punkin”; it was at the time her family was financially stressed. The metaphorical pocket means that her father’s assertion is an unconscious mantra that emboldens her to weather difficult situations in her life.
Cliff
Warren recounts, “As I walked back to my office, I thought about how close my family had come to disaster. After my daddy’s heart attack, we were tumbling down a hill toward a cliff, and we had been just about to go over the edge when my mother grabbed a branch-a job at Sears. She was fifty years old, and for the first time in her life she had a job with a paycheck." The cliff underscores the disastrous situation in which her family was in. They lack financial stability after her father's heart attack. Had it not been her mother's job, which she equates to a branch, they would have suffered immensely due to the family's deficiency of money. The metaphorical branch depicts the Sears Job as a saving grace that redeemed the family from extreme paucity.
Giant
Warren confesses, “When I sit in meetings or conferences and listen to people who have investment portfolios and second homes worry about the impact of raising the minimum wage on giant businesses like McDonald’s and Best Buy without a single thought about how the fry cooks or check out clerks support themselves and their families from week to week, I grind my teeth until my head hurts.” Warren employs the term giant metaphorically to underscore the massive profits with business raise. The business such as McDonald’s exploit their workers unfairly, it would have been fair for the workers to relish the profits arising from their labor through the increment of their wages.
