We didn’t remember putting them up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet.
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
This sentence rearranges the world, enlarging it, reminding us that the world contains mystery and the ineffable. The sentence refers to photographs, dim from time and weather, but it quickly unspools more details, transforming the images of girls’ bodies so they become mythical and otherworldly.
There is a great build to the surprising and world-altering metaphors. We see the photos, dim from time and weather, and this phenomenon is familiar. We see them again, and this time the image is not so firmly grounded in objective reality: “the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies.” The final image takes us beyond reality to subjectivity: “each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet.” Eugenides took seriously Russian formalist Viktor Shkloysky’s concept of defamiliarization, which is to make the common and habitual new again so audiences and see the world differently.
The magical metaphors! A metaphor is a comparison between A and B. Here, Eugenides creates two comparisons. First, each of the girls’ bodies is compared to a glowing letter. The second comparison is that the letter belongs to an unknown alphabet. What happens here is that we imagine an existing alphabet and then compare it to an unknown, undescribed alphabet that glows and is shaped like bodies. I love that the sentence lands in the unknown; it’s this turn that creates the mythical and ethereal. There are two modes of knowing: one is objective and the other is subjective.
One way to create fresh, original metaphors is to think of the world as domains or categories. There are humans, animals, plants, food, rocks, architecture, on and on. In this example, there is the domain of humans or “girls’ bodies.” To create something fresh, you want an image from a different domain or category. Eugenides used letters and the alphabet.
Your Turn
Open with an independent clause. In The Virgin Suicides, Eugenides uses the first person plural “We.” If you’ve never written a story using “we” this might be a good time to try.
Add a conjunction and a second independent clause followed by a modifier that adds details to the subject of this clause. Eugenides used “dim from time and weather.”
Add a subordinate clause and another description of the subject of the second independent clause, as Eugenides did with “the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies.”
End with your metaphor, which provides a third image of your subject.
Can you create music?
Do you hear the assonance and the peal of vowel sounds? Phosphorescent /bodies; glowing/unknown
And the pattern of stresses: DIM from TIME and WEAther (heavy stresses capitalized)
Try it!
Tell me, what else do you see?
If you’re fascinated by metaphors, I recommend The Spider’s Thread: Metaphor in Mind, Brain, and Poetry, by Keith J. Holyoak.
About Me
I’ve taught “Style in Fiction,” “Word for Word” and “Cultivating Your Prose” at the University of San Francisco and Stanford Continuing Studies since 2007. In each of these classes, we spend 10 to 15 weeks drenched in the beauty of sentences, reading them and writing them. It’s such a pleasure! I’ve watched my writing and my students’ writing blossom with this practice of paying close attention to the sentence.
Please visit my website to find all of my books: ninaschuyler.com
I’d really love it if you preordered my novel, Afterword, which will be published by Clash Books in May 2023. It helps the publisher and helps future sales.
I’m thrilled with these generous words!
There are so many textures and layers of mystery in this compelling and fierce novel--from identity to memory, from the authentic to the false. But the most crushing and heartening of these is the absolute mystery of human love. My heart was broken reading it, and my heart was put together again, in new ways.
Lewis Buzbee, author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop
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I REALLY love how you break these complex sentences down so beautifully at a craft level. It’s wonderful.