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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
Similes
Explanation and Analysis—On the Beach:
At the end of the second part, the narrator describes the beach at Bray Dunes with a collection of similes and an allusions. After the dramatically depleting and seemingly endless trudge towards the coast, during which Robbie is barely able to remain conscious, this outburst of figurative language simulates his relief and hope at having made it to the Channel—but also his disorientation and struggle to make sense of everything around him.
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Part 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Order and Disorder:
Early in the first part, McEwan develops Briony and Cecilia as foils for one another, which foreshadows their impending rift. The differences between the Tallis sisters—cemented through imagery, metaphors, and similes—fuel the motif of order versus disorder. Whereas Briony loves tidiness and regularity, Cecilia feels at home in the very opposite. McEwan connects Cecilia's cluttered room to her distaste for familiarity and her desire to break free from her family.
McEwan uses descriptions of the sisters' bedrooms to emphasize their differences. In the first chapter, the reader gets an impression of Briony through her personal space.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Whereas her big sister’s room was a stew of unclosed books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays, Briony’s was a shrine to her controlling demon: the model farm spread across a deep window ledge consisted of the usual animals, but all facing one way—toward their owner—as if about to break into song, and even the farmyard hens were neatly corralled.
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Part 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Fountain:
In the novel's first part, the Triton fountain—an allusion to Bernini's Fontana del Tritone in Rome—consistently exists in the background. McEwan uses personification and simile to develop the fountain motif, imbuing it with an ambiguous presence.
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Part 1, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Animal Migraine:
As the sixth chapter begins, the narrator follows Emily's thought patterns, taking the reader through a series of interrelated reflections and associations as the character skirts one of her chronic migraines. Throughout these reflections and associations, the narrator metaphorically presents Emily's migraine as an animal. It becomes clear that Emily herself understands this familiar pain as an animal and that she does everything in her power to keep from rousing it.
The animal comparison is first introduced through a metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She felt in the top right corner of her brain a heaviness, the inert body weight of some curled and sleeping animal. [...] It was important, however, not to provoke it; once this lazy creature moved from the peripheries to the center, then the knifing pains would obliterate all thought.
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Part 1, Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Being Wrong:
When Lola is raped in the 13th chapter, Briony immediately steps in as the storyteller of the crime. Certain that Robbie did it, she gives herself the responsibility of making others think so too. As Briony experiences waves of doubt in the weeks and months that follow, a range of metaphors and similes capture the feeling of being wrong.
In one metaphor, McEwan describes Briony's conviction as a glazed surface and her uncertainty as blemishes and cracks:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As early as the week that followed, the glazed surface of conviction was not without its blemishes and hairline cracks. Whenever she was conscious of them, which was not often, she was driven back, with a little swooping sensation in her stomach, to the understanding that what she knew was not literally, or not only, based on the visible.
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Part 1, Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Being Wrong:
When Lola is raped in the 13th chapter, Briony immediately steps in as the storyteller of the crime. Certain that Robbie did it, she gives herself the responsibility of making others think so too. As Briony experiences waves of doubt in the weeks and months that follow, a range of metaphors and similes capture the feeling of being wrong.
In one metaphor, McEwan describes Briony's conviction as a glazed surface and her uncertainty as blemishes and cracks:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As early as the week that followed, the glazed surface of conviction was not without its blemishes and hairline cracks. Whenever she was conscious of them, which was not often, she was driven back, with a little swooping sensation in her stomach, to the understanding that what she knew was not literally, or not only, based on the visible.
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Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—Waiting:
As a sick and exhausted Robbie drifts in and out of sleep towards the end of the second part, McEwan uses similes to capture the fluctuations in his inner monologue. Broken down by the war, his injury, and the long day of walking, Robbie experiences conflicting waves of doubt and resilience. For a brief moment, he even abandons his faith in the one thing that has kept him going for years—Cecilia and her promise that she will wait for him.
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Part 3
Explanation and Analysis—Fountain:
In the novel's first part, the Triton fountain—an allusion to Bernini's Fontana del Tritone in Rome—consistently exists in the background. McEwan uses personification and simile to develop the fountain motif, imbuing it with an ambiguous presence.
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Explanation and Analysis—Woolf and Modernism:
In line with the novel's postmodern features, there is a great degree of literary awareness embedded into the narrative of Atonement. Especially in the chapters from the perspective of Briony, who sees herself as a writer, the reader receives a number of reflections on storytelling, literary form, and narrative techniques. In the third part, McEwan uses simile and allusion to capture Briony's understanding of literary modernism.
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Explanation and Analysis—Bearing Fruit:
When the wounded soldiers finally arrive at the hospital, Briony is inundated with work. McEwan uses imagery and similes to evoke the physical and psychological intensity of the first day of caring for the soldiers. In many of the passages, vivid and distressing bodily imagery comes coupled with comparisons to fruit. Through this, McEwan both gives the reader a sense of Briony's revulsion to the bodies in front of her and her numbness to the severe trauma she is witnessing.
The first time Briony enters her ward after the arrival of the soldiers, she watches the nurses speedily and effectively do their jobs:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The sisters moved between the beds swiftly, giving injections—probably morphine—or administering the transfusion needles to connect the injured to the vacolitres of whole blood and the yellow flasks of plasma that hung like exotic fruits from the tall mobile stands.
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Explanation and Analysis—Hospital as Battlefield:
The third part follows on the heels of a drawn-out and intense account of Robbie's experiences during the British retreat from France. As a result, the war is front and center in the reader's mind when the narration jumps into Briony's experiences at the hospital. Although the Battle of Britain has not yet begun and the direct violence of the war has not yet made it to England, the reader can't help but recognize military traces in Briony's training and work. McEwan gives rise to this by using metaphor and simile.
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