"Anxieties about work transmuted into the baser metal of simple night fear: illness and death, abstractions that soon found their focus in the sensation he still felt in his left hand."
— McEwan, Ian (b. 1948)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
New York
Publisher
Double Day
Date
1998
Metaphor
"Anxieties about work transmuted into the baser metal of simple night fear: illness and death, abstractions that soon found their focus in the sensation he still felt in his left hand."
Metaphor in Context
In bed at last, lying on his back in total darkness, taut, resonating from mental effort, he saw jagged rods of primary color streak across his retina, then fold and writhe into sunbursts. His feet were icy; his arms and chest were hot. Anxieties about work transmuted into the baser metal of simple night fear: illness and death, abstractions that soon found their focus in the sensation he still felt in his left hand. It was cold and inflexible and prickly, as though he had been sitting on it for half an hour. He massaged it with his right hand and nursed it against the warmth of his stomach. Wasn't this the kind of sensation Molly had had when she went to hail that cab by the Dorchester? He had no mate, no wide, no George to care for him, and perhaps that was a mercy. But what instead? [...]
(pp. 26-7)
(pp. 26-7)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Ian McEwan, Amsterdam (New York: Anchor Books, 1999).
Date of Entry
05/14/2011
