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Written by Aleksei Marchyn
Happy people (Simile)
The narrator used to sit in the park and observe people around. It seems to him that they all are happy, have no troubles and have simple lives, they “swung themselves through life as through a ball-room”. He feels indignant that he has to endure hardships of life while all these people seemed to have no sorrow in theirs looks, have no burden on their shoulders. He considers himself the only one miserable in the world, and blame for it, to his opinion, falls on God.
Fairy tale creature (Simile)
When the narrator describes a made-up daughter of the Minister of State in Persia he is generous in his comparisons: “eyes like raw silk, arms of amber”, “her voice darted like a wine-ray right into my soul’s phosphor”, she was simply a Heaven’s wonder, a fairy tale. The use of such refined phrases proves the he is a real master of a word; he can find proper words to describe things and give them special coloring. Besides the fact that all this is factitious proves that he has rather developed imagination, and is able of accomplishing something worthy on the paper.
Physical pain of hunger (Metaphor)
The narrator very vividly describes his physical torments in the state of starving: “it was just as if my brains ran quite gently out of my head and left me with a vacuum”, which made it impossible to concentrate and write something worthy. Hunger became his constant fellow traveler. As he described: “Hunger put in its appearance afresh, gnawed at my breast, clutched me, and gave small, sharp stabs that caused me pain”. It could not let the narrator think clearly, made unbearable pain. Sometimes it “was as if a score of diminutive gnome-like insects set their heads on one side and gnawed for a little, then laid their heads on the other side and gnawed a little more”. Hunger in the main theme of the novel, which is clear from the title, and it acquires in the context some very vivid specifics, as if acquires characteristics of a living being. Metaphorically hunger produces both positive – as the narrator when starving looks at the world differently, it makes him notice every single thing around him, and negative effects – it prevents him from thinking clearly.
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