Metaphors use one image to replace another to enhance the reader’s multidimensional understanding of the concept. I always find that metaphors are the most effective and useful when they use something familiar and concrete to represent something complex and abstract. Sometimes, well known concepts, ideas, or objects give off a clear “vibe,” for lack of a better word. Those vibes can be more useful than any direct descriptions for complicated emotions, motivations, or ideas.
I chose a relatively short-lived metaphor: the ice cream from Edna Finch’s Mellow House. On pages 46 and 47 of the pdf, Nel and Sula are walking down the street past the pool hall to buy ice cream. Men watch them and catcall, but it delights the girls. Morrison uses ice cream related descriptions for the men, including “smooth vanilla crotches” and “creamy haunches.” It sweetens the image of these men, who I would describe at best creepy and at worst sexual predators. It also sexualizes the ice cream. This sweet, wholesome desert is corrupted by associating it with the mens’ crotches and haunches.
My first instinct in interpreting this metaphor is to say the ice cream represents Nel and Sula’s innocence. They were once young girls going to the ice cream parlor because it was an appropriate pass time for children. Now they go for something much more mature and explicit. They are pursuing the sexual gazes of the men, finding it sweet in the same way a child likes the sweetness of ice cream.
The ice cream could also be a symbol for sex in itself. The taste and color of ice cream is used as a representation for the mens’ genitalia. Melting ice cream could even be reminiscent of semen. It is a natural progression that the girls’ interests changed as they aged from a fun afternoon activity to thinking and talking about sex.
If I commit to my “vibe” theory of metaphors, I would say the sweetness, stickiness, and messiness of ice cream sum up the vibe of the metaphor. The feelings those sensory experiences bring up are what is being applied to Nel and Sula’s innocence or ideas about sex.