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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
Book 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Great Buildings:
As Rufus, houseless, walks the streets of New York at night, Baldwin uses similes and an idiom to show how colossal and unrelenting Manhattan seems:
The great buildings, unlit, blunt like the phallus or sharp like the spear, guarded the city which never slept.
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Explanation and Analysis—Startled Rushes:
Near the beginning of the novel, Baldwin uses a simile describing Leona as a frightened animal when Rufus questions why she’d be in a predominantly Black jazz club alone. He enjoys seeing how uneasy his words make her:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She watched the closed doors as though her life depended on it.
“This your first time in New York?”
Yes, it was, she told him, but she had been dreaming about it all her life—half-facing him again, with a little smile. There was something halting in her manner which he found very moving. She was like a wild animal who didn’t know whether to come to the outstretched hand or to flee and kept making startled little rushes, first in one direction and then in the other.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Venom:
As Rufus and Leona have sex for the first time, Rufus feels a nauseating mixture of hatred mixed with lust for her. Baldwin expresses this through a simile and some startling visual imagery. The way Rufus experiences her body and the act they perform together becomes inextricable from his feelings about racial difference and inequality:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Rufus opened his eyes for a moment and watched her face, which was transfigured with agony and gleamed in the darkness like alabaster. Tears hung in the corners of her eyes and the hair at her brow was wet. [...] Under his breath he cursed the milk-white [...] and groaned and rode his weapon between her thighs. She began to cry. A moan and a curse tore through him while he beat her with all the strength he had and felt the venom shoot out of him, enough for a hundred black-white babies.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Chasm:
When Cass and Richard depart the bar where they have been sitting with a group, they unknowingly leave Rufus, Jane, and Vivaldo in a tense situation. Baldwin uses an allusion referencing a line from Jailhouse Hopkins’s “Lightnin’ Blues” and a simile to illustrate this:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Everyone was gone except Jane and Rufus and Vivaldo.
I wouldn’t mind being in jail but I’ve got to stay there so long.…The seats the others had occupied were like a chasm now between Rufus and the white boy and the white girl.
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Explanation and Analysis—Ain't I Your Baby?:
Rufus has truly hit rock bottom when he decides to end his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. Baldwin uses pathos and simile to make the reader feel Rufus's horror and despair as he contemplates his death:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He raised his eyes to heaven. He thought, You bastard [...] Ain’t I your baby, too? He began to cry. Something in Rufus which could not break shook him like a rag doll and splashed salt water all over his face and filled his throat and his nostrils with anguish. He knew the pain would never stop. He could never go down into the city again. He dropped his head as though someone had struck him and looked down at the water. It was cold and the water would be cold.
He was black and the water was black.
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Book 2, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Cathedrals:
As Eric and Yves fall deeper in love, Baldwin uses hyperbole and a simile to express the barrage of feelings Eric experiences. Lying in bed with Yves, Eric thinks:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Then, in the violent moonlight, naked, he slowly pulled the covers away from Yves. They watched each other and he stared at Yves’ body for a long time before Yves lifted up his arms, with that same sad, cryptic smile, and kissed him. Eric felt beneath his fingers Yves’ slowly stirring, stiffening sex. This sex dominated the long landscape of his life as the cathedral towers dominated the plains.
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Explanation and Analysis—Bees and Thunder:
As he describes Eric sitting in the cottage garden in France, James Baldwin uses visual and auditory imagery and a simile to describe the idyllic scene. Eric is hovering between attempting to relax and worrying as he listens and watches for signs of Yves, who is swimming in the dangerously rough sea:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Eric sat naked in his rented garden. Flies buzzed and boomed in the brilliant heat, and a yellow bee circled his head. Eric remained very still [...] hoping that the smoke would drive the bee away. Yves’ tiny black-and-white kitten stalked the garden as though it were Africa, crouching beneath the mimosas like a panther and leaping into the air. The house and the garden overlooked the sea. Far down the slope, beyond the sand of the beach, in the thunderous blue of the Mediterranean, Yves’ head went under, reappeared, went under again.
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Book 2, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Friendly Ocean:
Vivaldo returns after a night of drinking to Lorenzo’s apartment with Lorenzo and Harold to continue the fun. He feels buoyed up from their company and the effects of alcohol and marijuana. Because he’s so expansive and happy, he uses similes to describe the sky as a welcoming ocean and the stars as guiding signals:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The sky looked, now, like a vast and friendly ocean, in which drowning was forbidden, and the stars seemed stationed there, like beacons. To what country did this ocean lead? for oceans always led to some great good place: hence, sailors, missionaries, saints, and Americans.
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