Reviewing The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight got me thinking about the use of metaphors as novel titles.
Metaphor is the use of indirect comparison to describe or define something else:
metaphor
- A figure of speech in which a name or descriptive word or phrase is transferred to an object or action different from, but analogous to, that to which it is literally applicable; an instance of this, a metaphorical expression.
- Something regarded as representative or suggestive of something else, esp. as a material emblem of an abstract quality, condition, notion, etc.; a symbol, a token.
—Source: Oxford English Dictionary
Metaphors associate two things or concepts without the use of like or as. (Comparisons that use like or as are called similes; for example, “Your smile is like sunshine” is a simile, whereas “The sunshine of your smile makes me happy” is a metaphor.)
Metaphors are double agents. They say one thing and mean another. Their purpose within the symbolic order is to amplify, not deceive – to grow the stock of shared meanings. When we invoke a metaphor, we dislodge words from their literal perch. Our words become ambidextrous, stretched by analogy. We can say new things.
Some metaphors become so ingrained in speech they they lose their original metaphoric value. For example, think of all the everyday phrases we use that come from the sport of boxing: “on the ropes,” “down for the count,” “saved by the bell,” “throw in the towel,” “retreat to your corners.” We usually don’t even think of the origin of these phrases when we use them. Expressions like these have become faded metaphors.
But the best writers use metaphors to communicate something that they want us to view in a new light or to think about from a changed perspective: “Every new experience, or novel idea, is apprehended through metaphor – that is, in terms of something else . . . the power of seeing one thing in another is how language keeps step with human experience and thought” (Jansen).
When novelists use a metaphor in their book’s title, as Emma Knight does in The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, they’re suggesting how we should think about the story they’re telling. Here are three other novels with metaphorically suggestive titles.
The Last Russian Doll by Kristen Loesch
Kristen Loesch’s novel presents a timely history of Russia through the 19th and 20th centuries and on into the present. The porcelain dolls that appear in the book represent specific historical moments. By the novel’s end the narrator realizes what she needs to do in order to find her own place, represented by the last Russian doll she receives, in her family’s and her country’s history.
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
(scroll down to #3
Haruf’s novel is set on the high plains of Colorado, where the wind creates its own distinctive song. Plainsong is also a kind of minimalistic liturgical music. Both of these attributes suggest that this is a place where plain, ordinary people live and work together to create harmony among the people, and between the people and the land where they live.
Underworld by Don DeLillo
I was certain that I’d reviewed this novel years ago, but apparently I have not. This is the ultimate example of how a title sets a metaphoric table for the novel’s meaning. Published in 2007, Underworld opens with a presentation of the dramatic catch that won the pennant for the New York Giants baseball team in 1951. The remainder of this Big Book concerns the effort of Nick Shay, a waste management executive in the 1990s, to trace the history of that famous baseball back over the previous 40 years. The story incorporates several subplots that involve themes of waste, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, and the significance of individuals over historical time.
The Underworld is the name that ancient Greeks and Romans gave to their concept of the afterlife, where humans after death interacted with various gods and monsters. The beauty of metaphors is that they subsume all meanings they accrue over time, so that underworld also calls up associations of the Christian concept of hell, particularly as expressed in Dante’s Inferno. The novel’s title therefore suggests a chaotic, menacing, decaying world.
Study Notes
Let me open a treasure chest to explain how metaphor works
For this unsung philosopher, metaphors make life an adventure
How About You?
What novels can you think of that use a metaphor in the title? I’ve started compiling a list, so I hope you’ll offer some suggestions in the comments.
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
