As an AI language model, I can explain that a metaphor is a figure of speech that uses one thing to represent or describe another thing, highlighting similarities between the two. For example, saying that "life is a journey" is a metaphor because it compares the experience of living to the experience of traveling from one place to another. In the sentence "Although not explicitly stated, I can infer that the author is comparing," the metaphor is not given, so I cannot explain what it specifically means without more context.
