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Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Part 2, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Dead as a Bit of Dog-Cal:
In Part 2, Chapter 1, when Alex finds out his friend Georgie has died, he uses a very unpleasant simile:
I was told that Georgie was dead. Yes, dead, my brothers. Dead as a bit of dog-cal on the road [...] The starry murderer had got off with Self Defence, as was really right and proper. Georgie being killed, though it was more than one year after me being caught by the millicents, it all seemed right and proper and like Fate.
Part of the reason Alex uses this unsavory simile is to diss Georgie, who betrayed Alex by leaving him behind to get arrested at the old lady's house. For him to get caught, in Alex's mind, is what "Fate" ordained.
However, the simile also helps to convey Alex's struggle to process information on an emotional level; he is so desensitized, at this point, to violence and death that his friend's death is like any old "bit of dog-cal [crap] on the road." Rather than thinking about him as a person who, for example, deserves a proper send-off, Alex can only picture a mess to be cleaned up. This lack of real feeling when Alex first gets to prison is what the Ludovico Technique will supposedly "fix."
