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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
Part 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Stiva's Horse Collar:
When one of the Oblonsky servants Matvei helps Stiva dress himself, the story uses an ironic simile to comment on the behavior of privileged Russian society:
‘Well, all right, go now,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, suddenly blushing. ‘Let’s get me dressed.’ He turned to Matvei and resolutely threw off his dressing gown. Matvei was already holding the shirt like a horse collar, blowing away something invisible, and with obvious pleasure he clothed the pampered body of his master in it.
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Part 1, Chapter 22
Explanation and Analysis—The Moscow Ball:
Before the ball, Kitty admires herself in a mirror, using haunting similes and personification to describe her overall appearance:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The black velvet ribbon of her locket encircled her neck with particular tenderness. This velvet ribbon was enchanting, and at home, as she looked at her neck in the mirror, she felt it could almost speak. All the rest might be doubted, but the ribbon was enchanting. Kitty also smiled here at the ball as she glanced at it in the mirror. In her bare shoulders and arms she felt a cold, marble-like quality that she especially liked. Her eyes shone, and her red lips could not help smiling from the sense of her own attractiveness.
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Part 1, Chapter 23
Explanation and Analysis—Kitty as a Butterfly:
After rejecting several men at the ball, Kitty realizes that she has no partner for the final mazurka. When she sits down dejectedly, the narrative uses a simile and a metaphor to illustrate her predicament:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She went to the far corner of a small drawing room and sank into an armchair. Her airy skirt rose like a cloud around her slender body; one bared, thin, delicate girlish hand sank strengthlessly into the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan and waved it before her flushed face with quick, short movements. But though she had the look of a butterfly that clings momentarily to a blade of grass and is about to flutter up, unfolding its iridescent wings, a terrible despair pained her heart.
Part 2, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—A Blazing Bonfire:
When Princess Betsy holds a social salon after the opera, the group of aristocrats gossips with fervor and malice. The story uses a simile to express the liveliness of the derisive, rather mean-spirited conversation:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Each had something demeaning and derisive to say about the unfortunate Mme Maltishchev, and the conversation began to crackle merrily, like a blazing bonfire.
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Part 2, Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—The Terrible Glow:
When Karenin attempts to confront Anna about her intimate interactions with Vronsky, Anna lies with ease. The narrative uses a simile to compare Anna to a fire in the night:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Anna was walking with her head bowed, playing with the tassels of her hood. Her face glowed with a bright glow; but this glow was not happy—it was like the terrible glow of a fire on a dark night. Seeing her husband, Anna raised her head and, as if waking up, smiled. […] Anna said whatever came to her tongue, and was surprised, listening to herself, at her ability to lie. How simple, how natural her words were, and how it looked as if she simply wanted to sleep! She felt herself clothed in an impenetrable armour of lies. She felt that some invisible force was helping her and supporting her.
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Part 2, Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Obedient as a Bull:
After a massive argument between Karenin and Anna, Karenin feels powerless and compares himself to an obsequious bull with a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Outwardly things were the same, but inwardly their relations had changed completely. Alexei Alexandrovich, such a strong man in affairs of state, here felt himself powerless. Like a bull, head lowered obediently, he waited for the axe that he felt was raised over him.
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Part 2, Chapter 25
Explanation and Analysis—Frou Frou's Fall:
When Vronsky makes a wrong move during his horse race, Frou-Frou breaks her back during a bad fall. The story uses an extended metaphor and simile to illustrate the event:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She flew over the ditch as if without noticing it; she flew over it like a bird; but just then Vronsky felt to his horror that, having failed to keep up with the horse’s movement, he, not knowing how himself, had made a wrong, an unforgivable movement as he lowered himself into the saddle. […] He barely managed to free the foot before she fell on her side, breathing heavily and making vain attempts to rise with her slender, sweaty neck, fluttering on the ground at his feet like a wounded bird.
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Part 3, Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—The Long-Aching Tooth:
When Anna admits to Karenin that she is Vronsky's mistress and that she loves him, Karenin is both anguished and somewhat relieved. He describes the pain of betrayal in his heart with a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+His wife’s words, confirming his worst doubts, produced a cruel pain in Alexei Alexandrovich’s heart. […] But, left alone in the carriage, Alexei Alexandrovich, to his own surprise and joy, felt complete deliverance both from this pity and from the doubt and suffering of jealousy that had lately tormented him. He felt like a man who has had a long-aching tooth pulled out. After the terrible pain and the sensation of something huge, bigger than his head, being drawn from his jaw, the patient, still not believing his good fortune, suddenly feels that what had poisoned his life and absorbed all his attention for so long exists no more, and that he can again live, think and be interested in something other than his tooth. This was the feeling Alexei Alexandrovich experienced. The pain had been strange and terrible, but now it was gone; he felt that he could again live and think about something other than his wife.
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Part 5, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—A Hungry Animal:
In Italy, Anna and Vronsky live together in bliss and do not concern themselves with society for the moment. Without a social life, Vronsky eagerly occupies himself with new hobbies and topics, illustrated with a simile comparing him to a "hungry animal":
Unlock with LitCharts A+Sixteen hours of the day had to be occupied by something, since they lived abroad in complete freedom, outside the sphere of conventional social life that had occupied their time in Petersburg. […] Contacts with local or Russian society, given the uncertainty of their position, were also impossible. […] And as a hungry animal seizes upon every object it comes across, hoping to find food in it, so Vronsky quite unconsciously seized now upon politics, now upon new books, now upon painting.
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Part 7, Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—The Face of Fire:
Stiva travels to Petersburg to escape the uptight and stagnant lifestyle of Moscow. With an allusion and simile, the narrative demonstrates how Stiva better fits into a more relaxed, unconcerned society:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Moscow, in spite of its cafés chantants and omnibuses, was, after all, a stagnant swamp. That Stepan Arkadyich had always felt. Living in Moscow, especially around his family, he felt he was losing his spirits. When he lived in Moscow for a long time without leaving, he reached the point of worrying about his wife’s bad moods and reproaches, his children’s health and education, the petty concerns of his service; he even worried about having debts. But he needed only to go and stay for a while in Petersburg, in the circle to which he belonged, where people lived - precisely lived, and did not vegetate as in Moscow - and immediately all these thoughts vanished and melted away like wax before the face of fire.
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