Metaphor Examples in Short Stories: 6 Comparisons That Run the Whole Story
Quick answer: Metaphor examples from Chekhov, Gogol, Mansfield, Kafka, Tolstoy and Melville, from the single loaded phrase to the extended metaphor that organises an entire story.
A metaphor says one thing is another: the coat is a companion, the man is a case, the fly is the son. Unlike a simile it drops the word 'like' and asks the reader to hold both things at once. In short fiction metaphor works at two scales. The small scale is the phrase that lights a sentence. The large scale is the governing metaphor, a comparison the whole story is quietly built to prove.
Most of the examples below are of the second kind, because that is where short story writers most often get metaphor wrong.
Six metaphors, small and governing
The Man in a Case by Anton Chekhov describes the schoolmaster Belikov, who wears galoshes and a warm coat in fine weather, carries his umbrella in a case, his watch in a case, his penknife in a case, and finally his whole life in one. The title metaphor is built object by object until the coffin makes it literal.
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol has Akaky Akakievich come to think of his new coat as a companion, almost a wife, someone who shares his life. The metaphor is comic on the surface. When the coat is stolen, the metaphor means that Akaky has been widowed, and the story's tone turns accordingly.
Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov gives Ivan Ivanovich the image of a man standing behind the door of every contented person with a little hammer, tapping to remind them that the unhappy exist. The hammer is never literal. It is the story's argument compressed into a tool.
The Fly by Katherine Mansfield shows a boss rescuing a fly from an inkpot, then dropping ink on it again and again to watch it struggle, until it dies. Mansfield never says the fly is his dead son, or the boss himself, or grief. The story is the metaphor and the reader completes it.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy has the dying man feel he is being pushed into a narrow black sack, struggling against it, unable to get through. The sack recurs across the final chapters. At the very end he falls through it into light, and the metaphor has carried the story's theology without a sermon.
Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville surrounds its clerk with walls: the office window faces a brick wall, the story is subtitled a story of Wall Street, Bartleby ends in a prison yard with walls on every side. The metaphor is architectural and Melville lets the buildings say what the narrator cannot.
How to use it in your own story
A governing metaphor is chosen once and then proven by accumulation. A phrase-level metaphor is chosen for the sentence and should not be asked to do more.
Common mistakes
Mixed metaphors are the visible fault, but the deeper one is the metaphor that contradicts the story's world, an ornate image inside a plain-spoken narrator. Another is the dead metaphor used as if alive, 'a wave of relief', which no reader sees. The third is explaining the comparison in the next sentence, which converts metaphor into a footnote.
Where readers meet it today
Readers meet the governing metaphor today in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Raymond Carver's Cathedral, Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life, Jhumpa Lahiri's A Temporary Matter and George Saunders's Sea Oak.
What writers can take from this
- Choose a metaphor from the character's own vocabulary and world.
- Build the big comparison out of small literal instances.
- One register of imagery per scene.
- If you find yourself explaining the metaphor, cut the explanation and trust the image.
- Test each phrase-level metaphor by picturing it literally; if the picture is absurd, rewrite.
Try it yourself
Write a 600-word story in which a character's job (plumber, accountant, nurse, teacher) supplies every metaphor the narration uses. The word 'like' may not appear.
Questions
What is an example of metaphor in a short story?
Chekhov's The Man in a Case, where the schoolmaster Belikov keeps his umbrella, watch and penknife in cases and is finally described as living in one. The title is a metaphor the story proves object by object.
What is an extended metaphor in fiction?
A comparison that organises a whole story rather than a single sentence. Tolstoy's black sack in The Death of Ivan Ilyich recurs across several chapters and resolves only at the moment of death.
How do you identify a metaphor in a story?
Look for a statement that treats one thing as another without 'like' or 'as', then check whether the comparison returns. A repeated metaphor is usually carrying theme.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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