In the play's most resonant metaphor, the dishes in a collection mounted on the walls of her apartment come to symbolize lovers who have died.

Teenagers discovering that they have superpowers worked as a resonant metaphor for the mysterious horrors of puberty in the X-Men comics.

And out of his triangular journey - east, northwest, south - he builds a resonant and satisfying metaphor.

It is, on its own terms, thoroughly involving theater, while reminding you that real life has a way of coming up with resonant metaphors and ironies that no dramatist would dare invent (1:45).

Mr. Lucas, the very gifted writer of "Prelude to a Kiss" and "Reckless," has created an expressly theatrical, potentially resonant metaphor for the ways memory can cripple.

Yet everything is given a personal cast, displaying her knack for choosing a resonant metaphor or symbol, a pertinent poem or aria, even snatches of conversation that yield a secret of the place.

The satellites prompt thoughts about the future of Vietnam, but they do so as simple signs pointing toward certain topics rather than as resonant metaphors.

Aside from his friendship with Liesel (in one of the book's many resonant metaphors, he makes her a comic book using painted-over pages from "Mein Kampf"), Max is arresting because of his situation.

The story "In the Gloaming" - with its focus on a single relationship and use of twilight as a resonant metaphor for the process of dying - reveals how Dark's prose delivers particular forms of meaning.

These brands upon the brain (or, more precisely, the back of the neck) figure into a typically demented Maddin subplot (think forbidden elixirs and age reversal), but they also serve as a resonant metaphor for how parents imprint and sometimes wound their children.