When Nick is collecting grasshoppers to use as fishing bait, he pauses to notice the ways that the grasshoppers move and relate to each other. The narrator captures Nick’s reflections on the grasshoppers using a metaphor and a simile:
Nick picked them up, taking only the medium-sized brown ones, and put them into the bottle. He turned over a log and just under the shelter of the edge were several hundred hoppers. It was a grasshopper lodging house. Nick put about fifty of the medium browns into the bottle. While he was picking up the hoppers the others warmed in the sun and commenced to hop away. They flew when they hopped. At first they made one flight and stayed stiff when they landed, as though they were dead.
The metaphor in this passage—that the log Nick turned over was “a grasshopper lodging house”—communicates the sheer number of grasshoppers that he finds in that one location. The simile—that the grasshoppers stiffened when they landed inside of his bottle “as though they were dead”—brings readers closer to the scene, helping them picture the dramatic nature of the grasshoppers’ movements.
Hemingway’s use of playful figurative language here is notable because it’s one of the few times that such language appears in the story. It is clear that, while witnessing the grasshoppers’ silly antics, Nick feels joyful and unburdened. While many things remind him of his painful war service, these simple creatures allow him to almost re-enter a childlike state. Easy moments in nature like this are clearly healing for traumatized Nick.
