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Setting
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
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Hornets to Treacle:
In Chapter 1, Captain Graveling uses a simile to describe Billy's effect on the rest of his crew after his arrival:
Before I shipped that young fellow, my forecastle was a rat-pit of quarrels. It was black times, I tell you aboard the Rights here [...] But Billy came; and it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shandy. Not that he preached to them or said or did anything in particular; but a virtue went out of him, sugaring the sour ones. They took to him like hornets to treacle.
Explanation and Analysis—Goldfinch in a Cage:
In Chapter 1, the narrator uses a simile after Lieutenant Ratcliffe recruits Billy Budd for the H.M.S. Bellipotent:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The officer contented himself with his first spontaneous choice. To the surprise of the ship’s company, though much to the lieutenant’s satisfaction, Billy made no demur. But, indeed, any demur would have been as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Claggart and Budd:
In the novel, John Claggart is a foil to Billy Budd. He exists largely to contrast Billy's traits, values, and motivations, and vice versa. Note how the narrator describes John Claggart in Chapter 8:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Claggart was a man about five-and-thirty, somewhat spare and tall, yet of no ill figure upon the whole. His hand was too small and shapely to have been accustomed to hard toil. The face was a notable one, the features all except the chin cleanly cut as those on a Greek medallion; yet the chin, beardless as Tecumseh’s, had something of strange protuberant broadness in its make.
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Explanation and Analysis—Saint Bernard's Breed:
In Chapter 2, the narrator uses a simile and compares Billy's sense of self-awareness to that of a Saint Bernard's dog:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Of self-consciousness he seemed to have little or none, or about as much as we may reasonably impute to a dog of Saint Bernard’s breed.
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Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Camoëns :
In Chapter 8, the narrator uses a simile and makes an allusion to the poet Luiz de Camoëns as he reflects on the various (and sometimes disreputable) ways the navy recruited sailors, specifically in reference to John Claggart:
Unlock with LitCharts A+That era appears measurably clear to us who look back at it, and but read of it. But to the grandfathers of us graybeards, the more thoughtful of them, the genius of it presented an aspect like that of Camoëns’ Spirit of the Cape, an eclipsing menace mysterious and prodigious.
Explanation and Analysis—Claggart and Budd:
In the novel, John Claggart is a foil to Billy Budd. He exists largely to contrast Billy's traits, values, and motivations, and vice versa. Note how the narrator describes John Claggart in Chapter 8:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Claggart was a man about five-and-thirty, somewhat spare and tall, yet of no ill figure upon the whole. His hand was too small and shapely to have been accustomed to hard toil. The face was a notable one, the features all except the chin cleanly cut as those on a Greek medallion; yet the chin, beardless as Tecumseh’s, had something of strange protuberant broadness in its make.
Related Themes:
Chapter 12 (not in all editions)
Explanation and Analysis—Like the Scorpion:
At the end of Chapter 12, the narrator uses a simile to describe Claggart's nature:
Unlock with LitCharts A+With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart’s, surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it.
Explanation and Analysis—Chang and Eng:
In Chapter 12, the narrator uses an allusion and simile to describe John Claggart's feelings about Billy Budd, specifically regarding Billy's "significant personal beauty":
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth.
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