(re)Consider the opening description of Norris fumbling about his clothes, absently looking for a light apparently without realizing that that is what he is doing (or, that is the way I read the scene as described by the narrator). It is an extended, non-standard simile: the narrator is describing what the “number of flurried gestures round his waistcoat” resembled, what they were like. It is a clear comparison of what he (the narrator) observed to some other more comprehensible (?) activities. But to what end? Presuming the narrator is telling some interlocutor(s) a story, then he is obviously trying to convey his impression(s)—in a pictorial (?) sense—of the observed movements which, without such comparison, would be impossible to communicate. Or would it/they be impossible to communicate? Have you ever stopped to consider what a story might be like without figurative language? What communication amongst us human beings would be like without figurative language? This, fundamentally, is the basis behind books like Lakoff’s Metaphors We Live By and Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.

Of course, where similes are explicit comparisons (though, apparently not all comparisons are similes), we have to account for metaphors, too, as one of the aids to communication, though they are for the most part indirect comparisons—sort of.

Consider the opening paragraphs of Goodbye to Berlin:

From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scrollwork and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class.
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all of this will have to be developed, carefully printed, and fixed.

Again we open with an interlacing of simile and metaphor; in this case they beautifully support each other: images, not sentences; objects of attention, no movement. And the capping metaphor (“I am a camera . . .”) is carried over into analogy, suggesting (perhaps?) that the process of writing and publishing and “fixing” in history is not wholly unlike the process of open-eyed observation, recording of impressions, and later development of those impressions associated with photography.

But, where does “story” come from? Do we have “story” in these opening paragraphs of Goodbye to Berlin? Clearly there is “story” in the opening of The Last of Mr Norris. How are these openings different?

Consider the following:

Even now, he didn’t answer at once. He appeared to be engaged in some sort of rapid mental calculation, while his fingers, nervously active, sketched a number of flurried gestures round his waistcoat. For all they conveyed, he might equally have been going to undress, to draw a revolver, or merely make sure that I hadn’t stolen his money. Then the moment of agitation passed from his gaze like a little cloud, leaving a clear blue sky. At last he had understood what it was that I wanted . . . ” (1)

Here we have the narrator clearly attempting to “read” the mind of his “fellow traveler” (which phrase might take on further meaning later in the text). But there is some hesitancy, some uncertainty, as shown by the alternatives he offers as to the meaning of the nervous dance of Norris’ fingers. But later in the same chapter:

The cigarettes were both lighted now. We sat back in our respective places. The stranger was still doubtful of me. He was wondering whether he hadn’t gone too far, delivered himself to a bore or a crook. His timid soul was eager to retire.” (2)

Our narrator is more certain of his ability to read Norris. He explicitly assigns meanings to facial expressions, mannerisms, tonalities of voice. We all do it . . . all of the time. It is one of many mechanisms by which we get by in the world outside of our skin. The question is: how accurate is his reading? Does Norris really have a timid soul? I am sure we will find out before we see The Last of Mr. Norris.