With reference to the characters themselves, it is possible to see the metaphors present – for example, the Reverend ‘Belcher’. When viewed from Frankie’s (Owen’s son, a child of 7) perspective, the man is continuously described as resembling a hot air balloon. “If he had removed the long garment, this individual would have resembled a balloon: the feet representing the car and the small head that surmounted the globe, the safety valve”; this quotation is the main description we as readers receive of the Rev. Mr Belcher, the word “globe” in particular is telling, as it not only emphasizes the sheer size of the preacher but also Tressell was perhaps hinting very subtly at the spread of Catholicism throughout the world, and that this man – described as disgusting and revolting – is a typical example of the normal clergyman.
The general theme throughout the novel is that of the ‘system’. Owen spends nearly the entirety of the narration attempting to convince his workmates that the system is broken and cannot be fixed so therefore must be replaced. In order for Owen (and arguably Tressell through him) to explain in a way that the others would understand, we see in chapter 15 the metaphor of the house. Tressell says; through the speech of Owen;
suppose some people “were always ill, and suppose that the[ir] house was badly built, … the roof broken and leaky, the drains defective, … and the rooms badly shaped and draughty. If you were asked to name, in a word, the cause of the ill-health of the people who lived there you would say--the house. All the tinkering in the world would not make that house fit to live in; the only thing to do with it would be to pull it down and build another. Well, we're all living in a house called the Money System; and as a result most of us are suffering from a disease called poverty. There's so much the matter with the present system that it's no good tinkering at it. Everything about it is wrong and there's nothing about it that's right. There's only one thing to be done with it and that is to smash it up and have a different system altogether. We must get out of it.'”
This metaphor is fairly obvious – but the use of it alone is important as it is extremely effective and simple to understand. In the novel Tressell is attempting to explain to the reader (through the narrative) Socialism, the cause of poverty and the solution. In this extract Tressell uses the house to represent the system and the ‘illness’ is poverty.
