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"His cell was a concrete box six feet by ten with one window and a steel door with a slot wide enough to slip his hands through but that was all, and most of the time he just lay there on his cot, his mind so blank it was like a pail with nothing in it."

— Cronin, Justin

Author

The Passage

Place of Publication

New York

Publisher

Random House

Date

2010

Metaphor

"His cell was a concrete box six feet by ten with one window and a steel door with a slot wide enough to slip his hands through but that was all, and most of the time he just lay there on his cot, his mind so blank it was like a pail with nothing in it."

Metaphor in Context

On that morning in March, Anthony Lloyd Carter, inmate number 999642, sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murder of a Houston mother of two named Rachel Wood whose lawn he had mowed every week for forty dollars and a glass of iced tea, had been a resident of the Administrative Segregation Block of Terrell Unit for one thousand three hundred and thirty-two days--less than many, more than some, not that in Carter's sense of things this made a lick of difference. It wasn't like you got a prize for being there the longest. He ate alone, exercised alone, showered alone, and a week was the same as a day or a month to him. The only different thing that was going to happen would come on the day the warden and the chaplain appeared at his cell and he'd take the ride to the room with the needle, and that day wasn't so far off. He was allowed to read, but that wasn't easy for him, it never had been, and he had long since stopped fussing with it. His cell was a concrete box six feet by ten with one window and a steel door with a slot wide enough to slip his hands through but that was all, and most of the time he just lay there on his cot, his mind so blank it was like a pail with nothing in it. Half the time he couldn't have said for sure if he was awake or still sleeping.
(p. 26)