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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
Zero (August 7, 1944): Bombers
Explanation and Analysis—Unholy Tooth:
In Section Zero, Doerr uses simile to describe an American bombing campaign against German forces in Saint-Malo:
To the bombardiers, the walled city on its granite headland, drawing ever closer, looks like an unholy tooth, something black and dangerous, a final abscess to be lanced away.
Related Themes:
Zero (August 7, 1944): The Boy
Explanation and Analysis—Her Majesty:
In Section Zero, Doerr introduces readers to Werner Pfennig, a young soldier in the German military forced to fight for the Nazi regime. Readers meet Werner in media res, in the midst of battle and cannon fire. Doerr describes one particular cannon from the perspective of Werner's fellow soldiers, using both simile and metaphor to accurately portray their attitude towards the weapon:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon, and for the past week these men have tended to it the way worker bees might tend to a queen. They’ve fed her oils, repainted her barrels, lubricated her wheels; they’ve arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings. The royal acht acht, a deathly monarch meant to protect them all.
Related Themes:
One (1934): Zollverein
Explanation and Analysis—Zollverein:
In Section One, Doerr introduces readers to Zollverein, a German industrial town that is home to Werner and Jutta Pfennig. The life these two children lead would appear grim to anyone: orphaned, destined to work in the coal mines, they are destined to die like their father did, crushed under the wheel of the German industrial machine. Zollverein itself is an unappealing, even hostile environment, as Doerr communicates through simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Smokestacks fume and locomotives trundle back and forth on elevated conduits and leafless trees stand atop slag heaps like skeleton hands shoved up from the underworld.
Related Themes:
One (1934): The Professor
Explanation and Analysis—Possibility:
In Section One, Werner begins listening to the Professor's radio programs, which excite his imagination. Prompted to picture the process of coal being formed from organic matter over thousands of years, Werner is inspired to imagine other things, beautiful things he has never experienced or seen in real life. Doerr utilizes simile to illustrate this:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever,
and then a piano comes on, playing a lonely song that sounds to Werner like a golden boat traveling a dark river, a progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollverein: the houses turned to mist, the mines filled in, the smokestacks fallen, an ancient sea spilling through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility.
Related Themes:
One (1934): Bigger Faster Brighter
Explanation and Analysis—Voice of the Reich:
In the following excerpt from Section One, the narrator meditates on the use of radio in Germany. It is a uniting force, albeit with sinister connotations, that Doerr chooses to personify:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth. Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the
staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its
branches as if toward the lips of God. And when God stops whispering, they become desperate for
someone who can put things right.
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