In Chapter 10, Ellison uses a metaphor or a direct comparison between Mr. Brockway’s face and a walnut to help the reader visualize the engineer. The narrator goes to the furnace room and meets the engineer, Mr. Lucius Brockway. Mr. Brockway believes that the narrator is there to steal away his job so he initially treats him with great suspicion. In fact, Mr. Brockway begins to send the narrator away, but stops and turns around. The narrator, describing this moment states, “Returning, he looked at me sharply, his withered face an animated walnut with shrewd, reddish eyes" (P. 208). With is metaphor Ellison does a remarkable job of capturing the scene. The reader can see the lines and crevices of a walnut superimposed over Mr. Brockway’s face and instantly sense his age, frustration, and uncompromising demeanor and yet a walnut is not threatening and even conjures up notions of cakes and cookies. In this way the metaphor has a dual effect of helping the reader see how Mr. Brockway is beginning to soften toward the narrator.