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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
Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—Time Turned Water:
Part 1 reaches for a simile as its characters try to make sense of life’s strange pace. Grasping for answers to the paradox of time, Bim likens their lives to water as she chats with her sister:
‘Isn’t it strange how life won’t flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood? There are these long still stretches—nothing happens—each day is exactly like the other—plodding, uneventful—and then suddenly there is a crash—mighty deeds take place—momentous events—even if one doesn’t know it at the time—and then life subsides again into the backwaters till the next push, the next flood?
Related Themes:
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—That Summer:
Clear Light of Day bridges its Part I and II with a flashback. At the mention of “that summer” during Tara’s conversation with Bim, the novel whisks the two siblings and the reader back to 1947:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The city was in flames that summer. Every night fires lit up the horizon beyond the city walls so that the sky was luridly tinted with festive flames of orange and pink, and now and then a column of white smoke would rise and stand solid as an obelisk in the dark.
Related Themes:
