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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 2
Explanation and Analysis—Sir Isaac Newton:
Victor uses a simile and a metaphor and alludes to physicist Sir Isaac Newton when he describes his thirst for knowledge to Robert Walton in Chapter 2:
Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth.
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Explanation and Analysis—Saintly Soul:
In Chapter 2, Victor uses a simile of a lamp at a saint's shrine to describe his wife Elizabeth’s nature:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Torrent:
In Chapter 2, Victor uses a simile of a rushing torrent to describe how his extreme thirst for knowledge began:
Unlock with LitCharts A+For when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.
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Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Light:
In Chapter 4, Victor uses a simile of light to describe his intense love of natural philosophy, an ambition that drives him to distraction but leads him to discover the secret of life:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The information I had obtained was of a nature rather to direct my endeavours so soon as I should point them towards the object of my search, than to exhibit that object already accomplished. I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual, light.
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Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Misery Like A Cloud:
At the end of Chapter 8 Elizabeth weeps, unhappy at the news of Justine’s death sentence. Victor uses a simile to describe her demeanor, comparing her unhappiness to a cloud:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But hers was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
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Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Evil Spirit:
In Chapter 9, Victor uses a simile comparing himself to an evil spirit to describe the guilt he feels after Justine, who has been wrongly convicted of murder, is executed:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself), was yet behind.
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Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Lichen on Rock:
In Chapter 13, when the Monster discovers its own ugliness and realizes people have been judging it based on its appearance rather than its nature, he describes the experience of gaining this knowledge through personification and simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling.
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Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Shining in Mockery:
In Chapter 16, the Monster is rejected by the De Lacey family. The Monster, in a fit of rage and loneliness, personifies the wilderness around it:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.
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