 The gnomon of these two similar triangles is the triangle remaining when the smaller of the two similar isosceles triangles is removed from the larger one.The gnomon is itself isosceles if and only if the ratio of the sides to the base of the original isosceles triangle, and the ratio of the base to the sides of the gnomon, is the golden ratio, in which case the acute isosceles triangle is the golden triangle and its gnomon is the golden gnomon.A metaphor based around the geometry of a gnomon plays an important role in the literary analysis of James Joyce's "Dubliners", involving both a play on words between "paralysis" and "parallelogram", and the geometric meaning of a gnomon as something fragmentary, diminished from its completed shape.