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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
Chapter 1: Choose the Good
Explanation and Analysis—Two Cats:
In Chapter 1, Westover introduces her family and their complex relationships. One relationship that will remain important throughout the memoir is that between Tara's father Gene and his mother, Grandma-down-the-hill. Westover uses a striking simile, which is also an antiquated idiom, to describe the mother and son's relationship, and she extends the idiom in the next sentence:
Dad and his mother got along like two cats with their tails tied together. They could talk for a week and not agree about anything, but they were tethered by their devotion to the mountain.
Related Themes:
Chapter 4: Apache Women
Explanation and Analysis—Something Had Hold:
In Chapter 4, Westover describes one of Gene's depressive episodes. He had had a plan to make the "biggest snowball in the state of Idaho." He waits until after Christmas for the best snow from high on the mountain. Then, though, his mood steadily worsens until he totally separates himself from his family, pulled downward by depression, as Westover describes in a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But after Christmas Dad seemed to deflate, to collapse in on himself. He stopped talking about the snowball, then he stopped talking altogether. A darkness gathered in his eyes until it filled them. He walked with his arms limp, shoulders slumping, as if something had hold of him and was dragging him to the earth.
Related Themes:
Chapter 17: To Keep It Holy
Explanation and Analysis—New Horizons:
In Chapter 17, Tara takes her first classes at Cambridge and finds they are even more challenging than expected. In her American history course, the professor begins with a great deal of complicated political theory and historical jargon, which Tara does not understand in the slightest. She compares the unknown words to cosmic phenomena in a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In the first lecture, we were told that the next class would begin with a quiz on the readings. For two days I tried to wrestle meaning from the textbook’s dense passages, but terms like “civic humanism” and “the Scottish Enlightenment” dotted the page like black holes, sucking all the other words into them. I took the quiz and missed every question.
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