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"Yet somehow, while he'd slept, the name had taken up residence in his head, as if he'd gone to sleep listening to a song played over and over, the lyrics digging a rut into his brain like a plow, and now part of his mind was still in that rut and couldn't get out."

— Cronin, Justin

Author

The Passage

Place of Publication

New York

Publisher

Random House

Date

2010

Metaphor

"Yet somehow, while he'd slept, the name had taken up residence in his head, as if he'd gone to sleep listening to a song played over and over, the lyrics digging a rut into his brain like a plow, and now part of his mind was still in that rut and couldn't get out."

Metaphor in Context

The words meant nothing to Grey. The name wasn't one he knew. He'd never met anybody named Fanning, or anything like Fanning, not that he could remember. Yet somehow, while he'd slept, the name had taken up residence in his head, as if he'd gone to sleep listening to a song played over and over, the lyrics digging a rut into his brain like a plow, and now part of his mind was still in that rut and couldn't get out. Fanning? What the hell? It made him think of the prison shrink, Dr. Wilder, and the way he'd led Grey down into a state deeper than sleep, the room he called forgiveness, with the slow tap-tap-tap of his pen on the table, the sound snaking inside him. Now Grey couldn't pick the channel changer or scratch his head or light a smoke without hearing the words, their syncopating rhythm building a backbeat to every little thing he did.
(pp. 131-2)