Metaphors In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

The textbook definition of a metaphor is “a figure of speech that describes something as though it actually were something else” (1935). Without using the words “like” or “as,” the author of a story has to use the right words to compare people, objects, or scenery to something different from what they are. An author also uses a metaphor to give a more enhanced description of something in their story. Each three authors use metaphors throughout their stories to give the reader a better sense of each theme. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” takes place in Salem, Massachusetts during the Salem witch trials in the 1600s. Goodman Brown is married to a woman by the name of Faith, and they are both Puritans. One day, Goodman Brown decides …show more content…
Miss Brill is spending her Sunday like she does every Sunday, enjoying a day in the nearby park where she imagines that she was the center of attention. She lives alone so she personifies objects, for example, the piece of fur that she spoke to. In the first sentence of the story, the reader can pick up on the use of a metaphor. “Although so brilliantly fine-the blue sky powdered with gold” (196), is to describe and compare how the sky looked in the afternoon while she is walking to the park. Perhaps to describe that it was autumn because the sky always seems to have to hints of gold and “white wine (196)” during the fall. Not only for that reason, but she later on mentioned a leaf falling from the sky, which also hints at it being fall outside. It seems as though the metaphors in this story that could be found, were about the sky or about the scenery. “Behind the rotunda the slender trees with yellow leaves down drooping and through them just a line of sea, and beyond the blue sky the gold-veined clouds” (197). This metaphor is to perhaps compare the nature around her including the sky to that of a …show more content…
Throughout the story Phoenix comes across different bumps in the road, so to speak. “She was very old, and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock” (314). Phoenix Jackson is a woman who has lived a long life and every so often she has to make the trip by herself into town, so she uses a cane. This metaphor is to say that she is determined, careful with her walking so not to fall and a little fragile but that doesn’t seem to stop her any. She compares Phoenix’s walking to the rhythm of a grandfather clock, which never misses a