55 pages • 1-hour read
Rejection: Fiction
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Story 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 6 Summary: “Sixteen Metaphors”
The story is, as the title suggests, a series of aphoristic scenarios based around extended metaphors. Each scenario is written in the second person, with an abstract “you” as the main character. For example, one transforms a common platitude into an insult about you: “There are plenty of fish in the sea. But you’re not a fish, just an ugly idiot trying to catch one” (245). The metaphors describe you trying to catch fish, play catch, and call for help, all of which are frustrated by an ironic outcome—the fish throws you into the water, the ball is given to someone else, the person you ask for help instead talks about how bad they feel.
In one of the metaphors, you imagine sharing a life with a commuting motorist you see. In another, hearing a girl describe the worst person she ever dated ending their relationship leaves you envious.
You go on a road trip with friends who enjoy their conversation but are annoyed to have you with them. They summarily leave you at the car rental, but you don’t say anything, out of respect for their feelings.
You pity someone watching television alone, only to do the same thing at home. You have tried every lure for fish available, but no matter what, you cannot catch the fish you want, despite your best hopes and wishes. Even when you do catch a fish, something always sours your impression of it.
The story explains the meanings of metaphors, rejection, and failure. These meanings are mixed, so that the narrator interprets rejection as “a cross to bear” (248) and past failure as “a throwback.” Since mixed metaphors fail to communicate meaning, the concept of the mixed metaphor is itself an effective metaphor for rejection.
Story 6 Analysis
The abstract quality of this brief story serves as an interlude to transition away from the grounded reality of the previous five stories. Where the previous five stories followed the lives of interlinked characters, there are no characters in “Sixteen Metaphors.” The protagonist is a second-person “you” persona existing in each of the titular metaphors. Although no details precisely characterize this you, you are a singular character whose experiences of rejection successive metaphors track: “She throws a ball, you catch. But she was aiming for […] the guy from the second metaphor” (245). At the same time, using the second person makes readers see themselves in the protagonist.
All of the metaphors describe dating, as suggested by images that lean toward finding a companion—a fish to catch, someone to throw the ball to, someone to pick you up when you fall. Despite the story’s abstractions, there are still emotional resonances to the characters from the previous stories. For instance, when listening to your date describe the worst person she’s dated, you become envious, like Craig from “The Feminist” or Alison from “Pics.” Your rejection from their friend group echoes the experiences of Bee from “Main Character,” who fails to form a cohesive friend unit of their own. These resonances crystalize the commonalities that the book’s other main characters experience. Despite their isolation from one another, they are united by their insecurities, self-doubt, attempts at romance, and the sting of their failures. The Loneliness of the Internet Age ironically results in shared and comparable alienation.
The story ends by comparing you to the concept of the mixed metaphor, or a metaphor whose imagery is inconsistent or combines several idioms together (for example, “we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”). Conceptually, the mixed metaphor is a failure of communication, contradicting one layer of meaning with another. Like mixed metaphors, the main characters in these stories set out to do one thing but only achieve self-contradiction. Despite their best efforts to present themselves a certain way, they cannot help being perceived against their intentions. In The Struggle to Reject Imposed Identity, they fail to be understood on their own terms.
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