ABSTRACT
Metaphors are strange realities. Sometimes the implied comparison is so complex that one must examine it, ponder it, wrestle with it, and only after long contemplation understand what it means—for example the happy death imagery in the novel and film by William Kennedy, Ironweed, or the forgiveness theme in Flatliners. At other times, a rich, powerful, and deeply moving metaphor is immediately transparent. Babette, as Edward McNulty puts it, gives everything she has to deliver a group of people from their spare, colorless and loveless religion. She invites those who have chosen meagerness to a feast, to taste with joy of the abundance of life. Babette represents God’s self-sacrificing love without any appeal to the supernatural events of All That Jazz or Always. Axel, relying on Dinesen’s luminous story, does not have to appeal to special divine interventions.
