b. Family life
Besides illuminating the theme of school life, the theme of family life is also highlighted by the employment of transference of meaning in the story. This
theme is illuminated by the employment of metaphor, metonymy, and simile. An example of how metaphor is used to illuminate the theme of family life is
presented in the following datum.
Like when it hurts to think about selling the house, she tells herself how that bad feeling is just one dot in the giant Seurat painting of our lives.
Datum 17
The author uses metaphor in this datum to compare the bad feeling with
one dot of Seurat’s painting. The employment of metaphor in this example also
explains the theme of family life as Georges’ mom tries to cheer him up when he feels sad to think about selling their house. Georges is close to his mom, and he
like to pour his heart out; he always tells something which bothers his mind. Another employment of metaphor which illuminates the theme of family
life is also found in the following example. It’s weird, because I know Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is
right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. Datum 76
This metaphor example compares life with a bunch of nows. The
employment of metaphor also supports the explanation of what Georges’ dad
thinks about life and the problems in it. He advises Georges to tell him whenever he has problems and not to pretend that nothing happens. It describes the
relationship between Georges and his dad.
Furthermore, the theme of family life is also illuminated by the author’s employment of metonymy through the narration delivered by Georges. One of the
examples is found in the narration that describes the relationship of Georges’ family and how close Georges and his dad are.
As soon as I pull the light cord, I see a stack of Mom’s nursing uniforms on a shelf, perfectly folded into neat Dad-squares, with one of her plastic
name-tag pins resting on top. Datum 40
This example of metonymy is realized in associated concepts. It links the
concepts of Dad-squares
and Georges’ dad skill in folding the clothes when he is doing the laundry. It reflects the theme of family life since it describes one of the
unique things in Georges’ family and his opinion about his dad’s special skill. Georges describes him as a very good folder, he can even make his mom’s super-
puffy bathrobe into a nice neat square. Therefore, Georges calls the clothes that
have been folded by his dad as Dad-squares as it is perfectly folded into squares.
Georges really understands the unique skill of his dad that even he has his own term to call the squares of folded clothes done by his dad. Moreover, they know
well each other’s habit in everyday life; thus, it can be concluded that Georges
and his dad are close. Moreover, they often share thoughts and pour their hearts out, like what is
presented in the following example in which the employment of simile illuminates the theme of family life.
Like Mom says, life is like a million different dots making one gigantic picture. Datum 63
The comparative word like is used in this example of simile to directly compare life with a million different dots that make one gigantic picture. It is
what Georges’ mom thinks about life and she shares it with Georges. Thus, it reflects the theme of family life as it describes the close relationship between
Georges and his mom that they often tell stories and exchange thoughts about particular things. Not only exchanging their thoughts, if there is anything that
bothers their mind, they would tell each other about it. Furthermore, the employment of transference of meaning in illuminating
the theme of family life is realized in sharing thoughts between the characters in the narration. As the narrator of the story, Georges gives clues to the readers about
what the other characters think about particular things which are related to family life. Those clues are best described in the form of metaphor as it can clearly
describe and elucidate the thoughts of the characters. The author uses metaphor in illuminating the theme of family life to explain the character
s’ thoughts and it is conveyed to communicate the message to the readers.
c. Friendship