American Journal of Arts and Humanities
Volume 1, Number 1, 2016
Perspective Article
Metaphor Now and Then: Narrative Strategies to Make the
Narrative Visible in M. Twain, K. Russell, and A. Doerr's Writings
Lyudmyla Kazakova
The Docent, Southwest State University, Kursk, Russia
[email protected]
Citation: Kazakova, L. (2016). Metaphor now and then: Narrative strategies to make the
narrative visible in M. Twain, K. Russell, and A. Doerr’s writings. American Journal
of Arts and Humanities, 1, B1-B8. Retrieved from
http://www.asraresearch.org/ajah-vol-1-no-1-2016/
We live in the epoch when cross and intercultural ties are growing and strengthening. We can see
arts interrelating to develop unexpected and truly hybrid forms. For example, combining various
genre forms within one work of literature is well known as hybridization. Thanks to hybridization
traditional devices and strategies can start a new life, when they are getting untraditional functions
to become multifunctional. In fact hybridization of visual and verbal images can produce nonlinear
forms of traditional devices. For example, combining pictures and narratives writers create
nonlinear metaphor as a combination of visible and invisible, textual and subtextual info. The
other nonlinear form is a structural metaphor when stylistic device becomes structural principle
obtaining volumetric form.
Thus, to research contemporary multileveled, hybridized narratives we should develop new
methods, or refresh the old ones. Indeed, being based on a metaphor as a device and
metaphorisation as a key strategy ontopoetics gives way to numerous approaches proposed by
ethnology, receptive or gender study, or other theories and trends. In the XXI century when cross
and intercultural ties are becoming numerous, namely demetaphorisation can serve as a key to
author’s individual aesthetic, ethnic codes and messages.
The tendency to make metaphor visible getting new forms is rather old. For example, M. Twain
and Ch. D. Warner made such an experiment in the XIX century. The bright visual metaphors was
created by M. Twain and Ch. D. Warner in their novel The Gilded Age, a tale of today (1874),
where every of 63 chapters is preceded by one or several epigraphs taken from about eighty
languages all over the world. In the first addition these epigraphs were in their original languages,
forming an impressive metaphor of the world culture. As allusions to the source texts and cultures,
these epigraphs develop intricate non-linear bilingual relations with their narrative. So, bilingual
epigraphs served as elements and tools to create heterogeneous metaphor of the world culture. This
image is non-linear and very close to the essence of the modern term “conceptosphere” that is
proposed by ontological method. The key ideas and plot story of the novel create an opposite
(negative) vision of the industrially rapid, fighting for political and social prevalence, spiritually
impure world. Finally, aesthetic conception of this novel is deeper than a simple comparison or
even opposition: the authors make their readers think thoughtfully about everything they see and
do to notice true things hidden under the mask of bright images. Critical attitude towards the
reality, cultural and spiritual values are considered by the authors as a true treasure and the best
way to get out of cultural crisis, to distinguish hypocrisy and lie from fair and truth.
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“Ontology impregnates literature, like the alive water, – wrote Russian philosopher Leonid
Karasev. – It takes the burden of all other symbolic layers, all the aesthetics, mythology, sociology,
common sense and everyday details” [4, p.96]. Karasev proposed the terms ‘ontological poetics’
and ‘ontopoetical approach’ in literature syudy. These terms are the priorities for this article,
because, as we will try to prove, they are efficient to study literature works in the epoch of
multiculturalism. The term ‘ontological poetics’ was proposed in Karasev’s article Gogol and the
ontological question [4], where the author considers ontology as a matter of the ‘mind-body
relations’ and tells about ontological perspective of their entity. He sees that the author of a
literature text creates conceptually original reality by choosing narrative strategies and devices,
motives or other details. Traditionally we name it ‘individual style of writing’. But in fact this
reality is wider because it presents his original conceptosphere and reflects namely the author’s
way of thinking, his ethnic and social values, which we know as mentality, traditions, etc. The
study of this particular semantic and conceptual layer “usually closed to the author of the text”
Karasev called “ontological poetics or ontological approach to literature” [4, p. 84]. View of this
kind, which puts on the first place the human body, is one of the fundamental features of the
humanities strategy in the second half of the XX century. However, the founder of ontopoetics
understands body as an entity with mind, not as a ‘pleasure vessel’ or object of aggression. His
original view unites human body and his consciousness with the outer world. Karasev sees our
brain as a place or world that “connects” I “and the outside world” as “the place of interpenetration
of spaces, materials and movements” [5, p. 55]. The origins of this vision can be found, for
example, in the anthropomorphism of ancient philosophies of the world, for example, in Chinese
and Greek ones. Some associations are seen between ontopoetics and Henri Bergson’s theory. The
further development of this concept is in the works of the existentialists and phenomenology or
philosophy close to these areas, in particular, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. But if the Greeks
understood a human being as a measure of things, LV Karasev makes an attempt to return from
the “measures” to things again, and “dimensions of human subjectivity to try to find in them a
response and consent” [5, p. 57], is directly related to the conception of M. Heidegger viewing a
human being “pushed into nothing” when “things” (substances) reveals themselves precisely in
contrast to nothing and all the responsibility for this becomes a man’s burden.
Karasev’s approach is methodologically associated with the works by M. Bakhtin and V.Toporov.
In his numerous papers the philosopher offers an original interpretation of “authentic meaning” of
the works by Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Platonov, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Shakespeare, Goethe, and the
others. Speaking about authentic senses, L. Karasev inevitably returns to symbols, because, by
his words, “to cast nature from its symbolic shadow is impossible” [5, p. 58]. In fact Karasev
doesn’t follow tradition, he goes in an opposite direction: from the sign or concept denoting an
object to the object itself. When he calls this process ‘demetaphorisation’, he emphasizes the need
to wonder: “Eyesight should be abandoned of pride, we shouldn’t be omnipotent, evaluating, and
knowledgeable; we must learn to wonder what we see and thus gain the ability to restore the
original meaning of the things we saw” [5, p. 76].
Scientific works by Gachev, Toporov, Maslova, Karasev, Shogentsukova have composed the
theoretical ground of the ontopoetics. N. Shogentsukova in her monograph The experience of the
ontological poetics: E. Poe, H. Melville, D. Gardner (1995), expands the scope of this term: “Our
problem we see in the study not so much semantic plan but an artistic one, and poetics itself, the
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semantics of its components, and in their relationship because the poetics is much more than a
simple sum of methods, and it is more born from the interaction of its components”. Besides, its
analysis focuses “on the myth, symbol, grotesque, allegory, time and space, story, composition,
style, point of view, intertextuality, color, numerology, landscape, rhythm, metaphors” [13, p.22].
As a scholar working in the field of American literature, Shogentsukova has views close to the
symbolic school of the US literature criticism. Relying on the statement by V.V. Vinogradov that
metaphors are “echoes of mythological thinking”, Shogentsukova concludes that the ontological
approach requires to focus on the discovery and decoding metaphorical symbols, myths and
symbols embodied in it. Mythological or the archetypal symbols such as circle, cross, water, earth,
air, fire, wood, etc. are forming a universal “cultural symbolic core”, - as the researcher says [13,
p. 28]. Focusing on the concept of “metaphorical symbol” proposed by a student of E. Cassirer,
the representative of the US symbolic literature study Susan Langer, Shogentsukova considers
metaphorical symbol as the primary means for understanding figurative and poetic expression of
transcendental experience. In her opinion, “the metaphorical symbols” in relation to traditional
myth and its symbols allow every author to see and select their individual features or other aspects
of the ontological system [13, p.42]. Although theories by Shogentsukova and Karasev are
individual and independent, they both pay much attention to metaphor and symbol considering
them as the key code to original author’s conceptosphere and to the semantics of a literary work.
Principles and concepts of ontopoetics have become especially important in the context of
globalization, when cross and intercultural tends are in power. Z. A. Kuchukova considers it as a
metacode of ethnic poetics [7]. N.A. Krinitskaya proposes to apply demetaphorisation to
investigate science fiction [8]. Growing intercultural relations in the world of XXI century
literature set up demetaphorisation as a universal key to different trends. Kuchukova provide
theoretical background of ethnic ontology as a science. In the present day literature criticism
ontopoetics means “the hermeneutic method of textual analysis, aimed to reveal individual being
of an author with the general space being, which is reflected in the artwork and creates a
metaphoric, symbolic and plot-shaped figurative structure” [8, p. 694]. Conceptosphere or
‘conceptual sphere’ refers to the key concepts of ethnic and ontological poetics: “The set of
concepts, of which, as by mosaic principle, a native speaker’s worldview is being formed of” [9,
p.8].
Metaphorisation, implemented on different levels of the product, is read as the author's code, which
understanding allows to deepen the meaning of the work, to get into the specifics of his thinking,
his individual system of ideas, believes and superstitions to understand his views and preferences,
aesthetic and ethical values: “The task of the researcher of the text is to identify, with the help of
some art coordinates the writer can derive his original formula of human being” [8, p.10]. Finally,
demetaphorisation as a way to decode the key concepts evokes self-identification for both a reader
and an author.
Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, the novel All the Light We Cannot See (2014) by
Anthony Doerr follows the stories of two very young characters living on the opposite sides of the
battlefield. They are a blind French girl and an orphaned German boy. The author projects outer
conflict between their two countries on the consciousness of the young characters. They both are
almost children: Marie-Laure, an inquisitive girl from Paris who happens to be blind in about her
8, and Werner, an orphan from a small German mining town whose skills with mathematics and
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radio devices take him far away from his younger sister he loves. Both characters have to make
their first efforts to know the reality and the true life in war period. As the plot unfolds, their
stories are being interwoven in a way that sheds new light on both seen and unseen, on their inner
fears, and on humanity amidst the world’s most catastrophic of the XX century war disasters. The
montage principle gives the author a way to push the plot forward and back in time and place,
sometimes bringing these characters tantalizingly close, sometimes separating them by hundreds
of miles or by decades. A reader can see the events by the eyes of Werner, then with the blind girl
the reader perceives the world only by touch, almost feeling the subtle and tender line between
honesty and hypocrisy, betray and loyalty, cowardice and heroism.
Narrative is dechronologized, two stories set first in peace, then at war, in prewar 1934, at war
events from 1941 to 1944, and finally in the postwar years till our time of the XXI century. Besides,
narrative comprises fragments from letters with crossed by military censors lines. The letters have
been written by Werner and his sister, their letters are full of love, and nevertheless, they have
blind sentences, as frightening marks of war in a peaceful sunny landscape, as if dark and light are
struggling for power. So, light and dark are the key symbols and metaphors of the novel. They are
metaphorical because they are developing into the chain of the clue images such as “love” as a key
to life in harmony and “light” that is invisible, but vital and powerful: “What do we call visible
light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity
in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible…” [1, p. 22].
The narrative has extremely short sentences and chapters which change to the very long ones again
and again. Considering man’s inner world as complex as the Universe is, having deliberate
narrative structure as if being made in layers, the novel structurally associates with the Universe
structure: “What mazes there are in this world. The branches of trees, the filigree of roots, the
matrix of crystals,…mazes in the nodules on matrix shells and in the textures of sycamore bark
and inside the hollow bones of eagles. None more complicated than the human brain, Etienne
would say, what may be the most complex object in existence; one wet kilogram within which spin
universes” [1, p. 503].
So, structural formula of the novel is a complicated system that is permanently making new and
new crossing points and associations between its constituent locuses: “We all come into existence
as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract.
Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together,
mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The
lungs, the brain, the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our
mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us” [1, p. 518]. Doerr initiates
associations between man's brain and the Universe, widening the artistic space of his novel to be
open into the Space, he depicts brain to be equal to the Universe and even to prevail. Doerr creates
intricate as if being made of numerous different in size locuses aesthetic world to show the
complexity of the Universe in constant moving and changing. So, we are parts of the Universe and
we are really responsible for our thoughts and doings because our mind is like a model of the
Universe. Besides, it is more complex and independent in making new realities, and in destroying
as well. Structural metaphor of the novel becomes visual on the narrative level that is caused by
chapters and sentences varying in size and length, splitting artistic times and frequent balancing
between reality and mystics. They make novel’s artistic space three-dimensional, that embodies
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3d effect in writing. Let’s remind Jonathan Safran Foer who made probably the first effort to make
three-dimensional novel in Tree of Codes (2010).
In 2014 in Rumpus interview Doerr says that he “made a challenge” for himself…The goal was
to try to make a reader feel that a lot of threads were braiding together all at once” [15]. So,
numerous interrelations and segmentation of the narrative are strategies to imitate the complexity
of the real world. Metaphors are developed on several structural levels of the narrative:
 in the text as a stylistic device: light is a symbol of life and love;
 in the system of images: key as an object and a symbol, key master-the Creator;
 in structure of the novel: his novel imitates spiral movement of the Universe;
Besides, Doerr’s novel reflecting cruelty of war that destroys a young man, who is just trying to
get balance between outer reality and the inner world, evokes some associations with XX century
war novels, based on metaphor and grotesque, such as J. Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) and
K. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse №5 (1969). Doerr develops in the XXI century American
Literature a new version of antiwar novel warning about value and fragility of peace. Besides, his
narrative has some clear features of science fiction. In 2006 Jeff Prucher marked that SF is “a
genre in which the setting differs from our own world”, and in which “the difference is based on
extrapolations made from one or more changes or suppositions; hence, such a genre in which the
difference is explained (explicitly or implicitly) in scientific or rational, as opposed to
supernatural, terms.” [11, p. 171.] So, Doerr considers new technologies, their positive and
negative influence on man’s mind. One of two epigraphs to the novel is a quote by P. Goebbels:
“It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the
radio”. Doerr shows new for the first half of the XX century technology in the hands of cruel
aliens which were the racists. His depicting from time to time becomes cognitive. For example,
the narrator follows the legend of the Diamond “Sea of Flame”: “One crystal in a seam of others.
Pure carbon, each atom linked to four equidistant neighbors, perfectly knit, octahedral,
unsurpassed in hardness” [1, p.578].
Can we precisely qualify the genre formula of his novel? Is it all in all a science fiction novel?
This questions are topical, besides they aren’t easy. It is a well-known fact that genre definition of
science fiction (SF) is disputable. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction edited by J. Clute and Peter
Nicholls contains an extensive discussion on the problem of definition [2]. Modern SF isn’t limited
by writings about fantastic creatures invading the Earth and dark predictions of the future. Modern
SF often tells about real life but chooses metaphorical forms to do that. We regard Darko Suvin’s
(1972) being most useful in academic discussions: “A literary genre whose necessary and
sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose
main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical
environment.” [14] D. Suvin separates cognitive vision from any other making subject matter
unfamiliar as two, rather mystical and logical ways of depicting the reality. In fact fantasy and
science fiction today are penetrating into other genres, that presents a form of hybridization on a
formal genre level.
In Karen Russell's short story Haunting Olivia (2005 ) there are only two active characters set in
a rather strange story: two teen brothers escape from the house at night again and again to swim
along the coastline by boat. They dive into the dark water to get into the coastal caves because
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they try to find the body of their younger sister lost two years ago. Implicit narrator is the younger
brother, Timothy, he has to swim into the night ocean alone because the older brother has injured
his hand. Timothy's inner monologue moves from the present to the past and then back again. The
key figure, connecting past and present, is the image of Olivia, who they can't forget and refuse to
believe in her death: “It’s possible that Olivia washed up on a bone-white Cojímar beach, or got
tangled in some Caribbean fisherman’s net. It’s probable that her lungs filled up with buckets of
tarry black water and she sank. But I don’t like to think about that. It’s easier to imagine her
turning into an angelfish and swimming away, or being bodily assumed into the clouds”[11, p. 7
]. Olivia's name is from Greek and means 'happy’. Brothers lost their sister and more, they lost
happiness and harmony in their family. Their parents are ornithologists, so, all children have birds’
nicknames. And being too sensitive after Olivia’s death the family splits up to flew away like a
flock of frightened birds. So, the key device in the artistic space of the story is a metaphor.
Different in tone philosophical and mythical pictures of the night sea develop dramatic pathos and
metaphorical descriptions of nature: sea creatures, moon images, thoughts about life and death.
Sometimes he narrative has become too mythic to reveal the psyche of family relations.
The subtext is formed by two associative flows: the verbal narrative and visual (drawings).
Associate level (subtext) is being formed by interrelations of the two flows. The drawings are
involved into the story as independent comic sketches, contrasting with the tragic narrative. At
first they look like a clumsy attempt to make a joke of rather tragic story of two boys, stung by a
sense of guilt towards the dead sister. But then Timothy said that Olivia drew, and older brother
“Wallow saved all of her drawings” [11, p. 8]. So, the dead Olivia drew seven pictures integrated
into the text. But it is doubtful whether these figures could be made by 8-year-old child. Olivia is
8 and a half. Why did her sketches illustrate adult life? Certainly because Russell's story is an effort
to draw readers' attention to adults, to family life and problems, to show disconnection as a growing
gap between generations. To show it by children eyes, stressing dramatic changes in their psyche.
The author creates subtext to be seen on the text level. So, Russell makes an opposition of problems
being seen and unseen. She tells about them and shows their images in pictures. Thus, Russell
develops visual metaphor simultaneously with verbal stylistic device. Coexistence of visual and
verbal metaphors is the key strategy provided by hybridization in Russell’s story. Her tale isn’t an
example of fantasy as her later story about alligators, but presence of mystical and real worlds,
rational and irrational vision makes narrative hybrid as if made of rational and irrational worlds.
Russell’s narrative strategies differ from techniques applied by Doerr, but both writers develop
oppositions of metaphors to tell about light and dark, life and death, love and hate. Besides, they
both use hybridized genre forms. In Russell's story drawings inserted into narrative change genre
formula making a hybrid of visual art and writing. Doerr's technique is more deliberate and even
intricate, he creates dechronologized figurative world made of numerous locuses. His novel’s
structure is multileveled. In his narrative the difference between visible and invisible becomes
fuzzy. Numerous micro and macro locuses inside the artistic world of Doerr's novel awoke an
association with chaotically moving changeable Universe that becomes the structural metaphor.
So, visualization as well as metaphorisation in Doerr's novel is dipper, it gets structural level.
Genre formula of his novel is close to metanovel and to the novel of social awareness with some
features of science fiction. Final decision is revealed thanks to demetaphorisation to identify the
novel of social awareness. By the same principle Russell’s narrative is a psychological family
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story. So, having chosen literature works of intricate genre forms we have applied metaphor as a
key concept, principle and device to watch their genre formulas.
Every writer of a literary work finally proves his individual vision, his thoughts and his way to
condensate with reality by the means of stylistic devices, concepts and images. All they are
composing an individual conceptosphere where his national, aesthetic and social consciousness
priorities. Metaphorisation gives both the writers and their readers a chance to show reality and
rational wisdoms within fantastic and irrational things. It allows to move from irrational to rational,
from outside to inside. So, metaphor serves as both artistic and philosophical tool for identification
the original conceptosphere of the XXI century prose that Harold E. Hinds in 2006 characterizes
as“provokers of meanings and pleasure” [3, p. 359 ].
Metaphor in the XXI century literature multiplies its functions, becoming visual, volumetric,
developing simultaneously as a concept, constituent and trope. So, metaphor has already become
a key device to create 3D effect in literature writings. Besides, the choice of metaphors, their
semantics and interrelations inside the aesthetic world of a literature work mirrors the author’s way
of thinking, his aesthetic values and ethnic identity. Namely choice of metaphors, created by
metaphorical symbols oppositions can show the original authors conceptosphere and specificy of
his individual views. The metaphors are becoming the landmarks of author’s conceptosphere and
the perspective points to understand his mentality and the semantics of the narrative. The author’s
mind becomes a crosspoint of the outer realities in his individual thinking, the same crosspoint that
requires moving vertically that means progressively.
Literature Sources
1. Doerr. A. All the light we cannot see. – NY. –2015 – 380 p.
2. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. London: Brown and Company. – pp. 311–314.
3. Harold E. Hinds. Populat Culture Theory and Methodilogy: A Basic Introduction, The
Univerity of Vinsconsine Press, 2006. – 407 p
4. Karasev L.V. Gogol and ontological question // Вопросы философии. – 1993. – № 8. –
С. 84-96.
5. Karasev L.V Ontology and Poetics // Вопросы философии. – 1996. – № 7. – С. 55-82.
6. Krinitskaya N.I . Perspectives of ontopoetics method to research contemporary science
fiction. Kharkov scientific news. – 2006. – issue 47. - №727. – P. 208-212.
7. Kuchukova Z.A. Ontological metacode as a core of ethnic poetics. – Нальчик, 2005. –
312p.
8. Literature encyclopedia of terms and concepts / Под редакцией А.Н. Николюкина.
Институт научной информации по общественным наукам РАН. – М.: НПК
«Интелвак», 2001. – 1600 с.
9. Maslova V.A. Cognitive Linguistics. – Minsk, 2008. – 266 p.
10. Prucher, Jeff. Brave new words. – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
11. Russell K. Haunting Olivia//St. Lucy's home for girls raised by vowels /fiction.– 2006.–
230p.
12. Twain M., Ch. D. Warner The Gilded Age, a tale of today – NY. – 1873:
http://www.gutenberg.net
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13. Shogentsukova N.A. Experience of ontological poetics: E.Poe, G. Melville, D.Gardner. –
М.: Наследие, 1995. – 232 с.
14. Suvin D. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary
Genre. – New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1979. – 317 p.
15. The Rumpus Interview by Nancy Smith on 22014, May: [ electronic resource]
http://therumpus.net/2014/05/the-rumpus-interview-with-anthony-doerr/
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