Daniel Mendelsohn in the New Yorker of April 16th, in “Unsinkable” (p. 66):
The aura of significance that attends the Titanic’s fate was the subject of another, belated headline, which appeared in a special publication of the satirical newspaper the Onion, in 1999, stomping across the page in dire block letters:
A figure in which metaphor stands for the ship. Iceberg sinks metaphor!
Mendelsohn continues:
The Onion’s spoof gets to the heart of the matter: unlike other disasters, the Titanic [note metonymy: participant in the disaster for the disaster] seems to be about something. But what?
A parable about the scope, and limits, of technology? A morality tale about class? A foreshadowing of the First World War? Or what?
October 9, 2012 at 1:16 am |
Unsinkable? Inconseafarable.