Sometimes Lipsyte chooses metaphor, a figure of speech in which the author speaks of something as if it actually were something else. At the opening of Chapter 12, for example, Alfred is passed out on his kitchen floor, somehow having returned home from the wild party at the clubroom. Lipsyte writes that Alfred hears a rattlesnake buzzing. But in fact, the noise Alfred hears is the ringing telephone. Alfred's subconscious transfer of telephone to rattlesnake reveals his aversion to the constant harping of the trainers. He feels pressured by time. He thinks Henry is screaming at him and Jelly Belly is sitting on his head. The rattlesnake is a deadly threat, and Alfred thinks that life is attacking him. At other times, Lipsyte writes of punches that are tons of concrete or iron pipes, rather than saying that the punches felt like them. Under attack, Alfred sees the punches that way. The dominating metaphor of the novel, however, extends beyond any one scene. The fight game, Mr. Donatelli would tell us, is life. It is not "like" life or "as real as" life. It is life. And that is the basis of all of Donatelli's aphorisms (brief statements of principle). Alfred finally understands. As he says to Mr. Donatelli near the end of Chapter 18, "Remember what you said that night . . . about being a . . . a contender? . . . You weren't just talking about boxing."
The language may be cleaned up a little, but the dialogue in the novel is usually realistic. In the very first chapter, we get a clear look at Major's personality through the way he speaks. He is a manipulative bully who loves to mock. When Alfred says that he has given his pay to his aunt, Major mimics him derisively: "Gave it to my aunt . . . You such a good sweet boy. Old Uncle Alfred." Later, Major, who apparently never works, compares Alfred's job at the grocery to slavery. Major mocks the stereotypically "shufflin'" personality that he accuses Alfred of displaying to his Jewish bosses: "You be scratching your head and saying, 'Yassuh, Mistuh Lou, lemme brush them hairs offen your coat . . . I be pleased iffen you 'low me to wash your car.'" In contrast, Mr. Donatelli speaks in a straightforward, candid manner, as in his first meeting with Alfred: "It's hard work, you'll want to quit at least once every day. If you quit before you really try, that's worse than never starting at all. And nothing's promised you, nothing's ever promised you."
