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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, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Like A Dog :
Dickens compares both Pip and Provis to dogs several times in Great Expectations. This simile is used to explain a difference in power between characters, and also to indicate animalistic or uncivilized actions in the "dog"-like figure. In. Chapter 3, when Pip brings Provis food and drink as he hides in the marshes, he compares the convict directly to an animal he knows:
I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating, and the man’s. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction [...] he was very like the dog.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Little Goblin Crying :
In the early part of the novel when Pip is still a young boy, Dickens uses a fairytale-esque simile to describe Pip's surrounding environment. Looking out of his windows on the morning he must bring "wattles" to the escaped convict Provis in Chapter 3, a guilt-stricken Pip observes that
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.
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Book 1, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—A Little Bull:
When he recounts how his family and their friends treated Pip at home, Dickens uses a simile to liken the little boy to a bull in a Spanish bull-ring. When the Gargerys have company over in chapter 4 and Pip is forced to sit at the table with them, they will not give him a moment's respite from criticism:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads.
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Explanation and Analysis—New Clothes :
Dickens describes Pip's early childhood as being a battle waged between the boy and his unwelcoming and limiting home environment. For example, a simile in Chapter 4 emphasizes how restrictive all aspects of his upbringing were. Pip tells the reader that
Unlock with LitCharts A+I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the free use of my limbs.
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Book 1, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—A Bramble-Bush:
Although education in Victorian England was one of the political priorities of the monarchy and the government, learning to read was by no means a guaranteed skill for Victorian working-class children. Dickens likens Pip's efforts to succeed in getting an education against difficult odds to crawling through a blackberry bush in Chapter 7:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. After that, I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest scale.
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Book 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Star:
In Chapter 8 Pip is reprieved from Miss Havisham's "sick fancies" by being allowed to call Estella back to the wedding chamber where the crone lives. Dickens uses a simile comparing Estella to a star to designate Pip's feeling of salvation when she returns. Pip "roars out" her name, and
Unlock with LitCharts A+her light came along the long dark passage like a star.
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Explanation and Analysis—Wilted like the Flowers:
When describing the painful tragedy of Miss Havisham's living diorama of decay, Dickens uses simile to liken her withered body and clothes to the yellowed and wilting flowers around her. This gives a powerful sense of the dried-out, barren environment in her mansion in Chapter 5:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.
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Book 2, Chapter 31
Explanation and Analysis—Too Much Brass:
In the play set in Denmark that Pip and his companions attend in Chapter 31, Dickens uses a humorous idiom that also functions as a simile, likening the character of the Queen of Denmark to the metal she wears:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public to have too much brass about her; her chin being attached to her diadem by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous toothache), her waist being encircled by another, and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as “the kettle-drum.”
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Book 2, Chapter 39
Explanation and Analysis—A Smile or a Frown?:
In Chapter 39, when Pip's true patronage is revealed, Dickens describes the unreadable feelings displayed on Provis's face through the use of a paradox. As the returned convict gazes at Pip, the narrator describes his expression as
Unlock with LitCharts A+A smile that was like a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile.
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Book 3, Chapter 55
Explanation and Analysis—Violoncello:
When Mr and Mrs Wemmick—Mr Jagger's long-suffering legal clerk and his stiff but pleasant sweetheart Miss Skiffins—finally get married in chapter 54, Dickens uses a simile to describe the new bride in a way that relates her body to a stringed instrument. This description deftly indicates that though the young woman herself hasn't changed, her attitude has:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was pleasant to observe that Mrs. Wemmick no longer unwound Wemmick’s arm when it adapted itself to her figure, but sat in a high-backed chair against the wall, like a violoncello in its case, and submitted to be embraced as that melodious instrument might have done.
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