What metaphors are used in The Stationmaster by Aleksandr Pushkin?

The story itself is a metaphor for class conflict. Much of the conflict in "The Stationmaster" involves the inequality between social classes. The prologue alludes to the Table of Ranks that established an order of social ranking among all government workers. The stationmaster is in the fourteenth class, the lowest rank in the Table. The narrator tells us that he would rather talk with a stationmaster "than with some official of the sixth class traveling on government business."