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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: The Cruciform Tree
Explanation and Analysis—Mexican Ovens:
As Latour struggles through the desert alone in the novel’s first chapter, Cather uses visual imagery and a simile referring to kitchen equipment to invoke the dangerous monotony of the scene. She writes that as Latour journeys
He must have travelled through thirty miles of these conical red hills, winding his way in the narrow cracks between them, and he had begun to think that he would never see anything else. They were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wandering in some geometrical nightmare; flattened cones, they were, more the shape of Mexican ovens than haycocks—yes, exactly the shape of Mexican ovens, red as brick-dust, and naked of vegetation except for small juniper trees.
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Explanation and Analysis—Wavering Town:
Cather uses inviting, blush-colored visual imagery and a simile referring to a river to describe Latour's first view of Santa Fé:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] Santa Fé, at last! A thin, wavering adobe town . . . a green plaza . . . at one end a church with two earthen towers that rose high above the flatness. The long main street began at the church, the town seemed to flow from it like a stream from a spring. The church towers, and all the low adobe houses, were rose colour in that light,—a little darker in tone than the amphitheatre of red hills behind; and periodically the plumes of poplars flashed like gracious accent marks,—inclining and recovering themselves in the wind.
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Book 1: A Bell and a Miracle
Explanation and Analysis—A Silver Globe:
Cather populates Latour's dreams with vivid auditory imagery and similes, bringing his fantasies closer to the reader. As he lies asleep dreaming in Santa Fé, Latour imagines that he hears the sound of the Angelus bell ringing in Rome:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Still half believing that he was lodged near St. John Lateran, he yet heard every stroke of the Ave Maria bell, marvelling to hear it rung correctly (nine quick strokes in all, divided into threes, with an interval between); and from a bell with beautiful tone. Full, clear, with something bland and suave, each note floated through the air like a globe of silver. Before the nine strokes were done Rome faded, and behind it he sensed something Eastern, with palm trees,—Jerusalem, perhaps, though he had never been there.
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Book 3: Jacinto
Explanation and Analysis—Golden Ashes:
Jacinto and Latour sit by the fire enjoying some refreshments and the sunset over the Ácoma mesa, gazing out at the wild landscape around them. Cather mobilizes visual and smell imagery to bring this desert twilight to life:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The Bishop sat drinking his coffee slowly out of the tin cup, keeping the pot near the embers. The sun had set now, the yellow rocks were turning grey, down in the pueblo the light of the cook fires made red patches of the glassless windows, and the smell of piñon smoke came softly through the still air. The whole western sky was the colour of golden ashes, with here and there a flush of red on the lip of a little cloud. High above the horizon the evening-star flickered like a lamp just lit, and close beside it was another star of constant light, much smaller.
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Book 3: The Rock
Explanation and Analysis—Underwater Mass:
In his early days in Ácoma, Latour is having a difficult time reaching his new, unfriendly flock of parishioners. The author employs a simile and vivid visual imagery to describe the atmosphere inside the church as Latour tries to conduct a miserable Mass:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He held a service there before midday, and he had never found it so hard to go through the ceremony of the Mass. Before him, on the grey floor, in the grey light, a group of bright shawls and blankets, some fifty or sixty silent faces; above and behind them the grey walls. He felt as if he were celebrating Mass at the bottom of the sea, for antediluvian creatures; for types of life so old, so hardened, so shut within their shells [...]
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