“Death is like a predator” openly compares two subjects. “Death sinks in its claws” instead attributes the predator’s action to death itself.
That move accounts for the vivid force of imaginative metaphor: the listener receives an image of the assault, not merely a statement about its resemblance to an animal’s assault.
The figurative assertion, however, is not a claim that death literally possesses physical claws. Imaginative predication and external factual existence must be distinguished.
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Representative and Implicit Metaphor, Imaginative Attribution and Kināyah
“Death is like a predator” openly compares two subjects. “Death sinks in its claws” instead attributes the predator’s action to death itself.
That move accounts for the vivid force of imaginative metaphor: the listener receives an image of the assault, not merely a statement about its resemblance to an animal’s assault.
The figurative assertion, however, is not a claim that death literally possesses physical claws. Imaginative predication and external factual existence must be distinguished.