Simile plus Metaphor
An effective use of two figurative literary devices is to combine them together to broaden the imagery that is being conveyed. In this instance, the author wants to cement in the reader’s mind the image of hard determination that cannot be easily fought and combines the simile of frozen water with the metaphor of rock or metal.
“His hands were like carved ice on the wheel and his face was the face of a statue.”
Psychological Time
Another case is the use of two different metaphorical comparisons in successive sentences to drive home a singular image. The narrator begins with a simple declarative statement of fact from which the reader can infer that a substantial amount of time has passed. Rather than make another statement that clarifies exactly how long the character has been there, Matheson engages the power of metaphor that implies not just how much time has passed chronologically, but that that chronological time has been enough to cause profound psychological change: so long that he can’t even feel the pain anymore.
“He had no idea how long he’d been there. After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge. The flagellant’s curse, he thought, to grow inured even to the whip.”
“blood was the fulcrum of their existence”
When people hear the word “fulcrum” most probably immediately think of something like a teeter-totter (or seesaw); the support beneath a lever which allows it to be easily raised and lowered. But fulcrum also has a second primary definition based on the first: anything upon which something that can be supported needs in order to maintain that support. So the narrator here is using the metaphor to say that blood is the one thing that vampires absolutely depend upon for survival.
Anathema
In Chapter Three, when the protagonist is starting to consider the vampires from a research perspective, he silently observes that during the Dark Ages when the vampire was at its most powerful and fearsome, he was a despised figure because “he was anathema” and forever after remained anathema. Originally, anathema was a term for a formal notice of excommunication by the Catholic Church that was akin to be officially cursed. Over time it came to more generally applied to anyone who is looked upon as accursed outcast of society. The term will recur once more in the text near the end when the narrator applies it to another being, the hero of the novel:
“Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed."
Social Commentary
Matheson uses metaphor to insert a little social commentary into the text, thus taking it out of the level of pulp and deepening it meaning. The protagonist has reached the point where mere survival is not enough and has begun the process of learning about his nemeses. He begins to theorize from the point of vampire’s abominable acts from the perspective of satisfying a need and with this interpretation he minds is moved make a metaphor for vampirism out parenting.
“Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child… is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician?”