Alexander's Use Of Metaphors In The Writings Of Alexander

There is a significant metaphor that recurs throughout the passage that compares Alexander to something vulnerable and shattered such as glass. The author’s choice of words such as "fractured" "shards" and “splintered” connote glass and all of its frailty. It also reflects her desire to “see” straight to herself through the glass. However, all that shines back from looking into the glass is cracked or broken image of herself; this suggests her frustration caused by fractured identity and uneven sense of herself. She sees herself as a mass of discrete pieces that cannot succeed in coming together which suggests the disconnected aspect of the past that persist with Alexander. Furthermore, the word such as “shards” brings imagery of glass and fragments of other sharp materials that pierce and gash when touched, suggesting inherent danger caused by handling these bits and pieces of the past. In opposition to the previous "glass diction,” the author uses another important metaphor that compares herself with a lovely flower. In doing so, she employs a very gentle and poetic tone as she thinks of this “ideal” life that she has desired. This is the life that exists only in her remembrance and dream, the life of a "dutiful wife ... blooming in monsoon season ... in a sweet perpetual place." The juxtaposition of these two metaphors …show more content…
For example, Alexander's quote from the Oxford English Dictionary is very strategically placed in the passage. It is interesting that this very complex person composed of separate puzzles of identity finds a unifying definition of herself in the dictionary. However, as the rhetorical questions fractured the beginning portion of the passage, the short phrases of the definition also seem to crush the fluency of the writing. The two types of fracturing parallel the inconsistency in the author's