Patriarchal Paranoia
The nature of the subject of this novel primes it for the robust use of metaphors and similes. It is a tale of horror and mystery and the depths of the darkness within the human species affording multiple opportunities for philosophical commentary. “A madman at ease is safer than a sane woman unsettled.” Uncertainty and chaos tend to bring out the worst in some people and for some of them, that means immediately seeking sanctuary within patriarchal paranoia, otherwise known as misogyny. This metaphor is delivered with fully unsanctioned and unquestioned authority by a man toward a young boy in reference to the actions of his mother.
The Most Dangerous Game
The problem with people like the misogynist quoted above is that too easily succumb to what they see as proof of their own intellectual insight. Having addressed himself specifically to the young boy’s issues, he proceeds to expound upon the species as a whole. “Man is the creature he fears.” Actually, it is not entirely clear whether this metaphor is intended to apply to all humans or just males. The lingering question does not require clarification, however, since the point of the metaphor is to reveal the limited imagination of the speaker. This expression of existential dread is hardly original.
Time Passage
This novel is a sequel, of course, and one of the elements contributing to its existence is that it picks up the story after the passage of a significant amount of time rather than picking up right from where the previous book ended. This chronology allows the protagonist to see people not seen since before the apocalypse came. “He looks like someone who has walked instead of driven for seventeen years. Like someone who hasn’t seen a television, hasn’t used a computer, hasn’t eaten at a restaurant for that time, too.” The comparisons made through simile here are effective precisely because of the lack of details. Instead of conveying the effects upon someone after the passage of seventeen years, the author opts to describe the circumstance and allow the reader to fill in the implied details.
Darkness
Darkness is the metaphor that defines the modern age, appearing at least once in more novels written since the mid-20th century than not. Naturally, a novel in which the characters live in literal darkness for much of the story should be expected to utilize it as a metaphor more than once. “Malorie feels the darkness. It doesn’t press in on her but rather slides across her arms and legs, her neck, her nose, her eyes…It feels like the darkness, her personal darkness, the one she travels through, has gotten into her sleeves and boots, gloves and pants.” In fact, darkness in both literal and figurative terms recurs constantly throughout the novel. The phrase “her personal darkness” becomes a term which indicates separation as she engages it for the purpose of describing her state of mind rather than a state of reality.
Irony
Malorie engages an ironic image when she constructs a simile to describe the circumstances just before she attempts a very dangerous action. “She can see the image as if the whole insane scenario is a Norman Rockwell painting.” The details of the image she sees are beside the point. It is the comparison to a Norman Rockwell painting that seals the irony. Norman Rockwell is famous for ultra-realistic paintings of normal everyday American existence in which absolutely nothing insane or even unusual is happening. Malorie is using this quality of the mundane realism of the artist within a simile to intensify the self-recognition of the insanity she is about to contribute to the scene spread out before her.
