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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 4
Explanation and Analysis—Clap of Thunder:
In Chapter 4, Forster uses a combination of simile, metaphor, and auditory imagery to compare Helen's sudden infatuation with the Wilcoxes of Howards End to a "thunder clap.” This outlines the suddenness and intensity of her feelings:
[...] Helen was a more serious patient. New ideas had burst upon her like a thunder clap, and by them and by their reverberations she had been stunned.
The truth was that she had fallen in love, not with an individual, but with a family.
Chapter 19
Explanation and Analysis—Swelling Imagination:
In this passage from Chapter 1, Forster’s narrator employs visual imagery and oceanic similes and metaphors to depict the overwhelming experience of looking at England from afar:
Unlock with LitCharts A+How many villages appear in this view! How many castles! How many churches, vanished or triumphant! How many ships, railways, and roads! What incredible variety of men working beneath that lucent sky to what final end! The reason fails, like a wave on the Swanage beach; the imagination swells, spreads, and deepens, until it becomes geographic and encircles England.
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Chapter 23
Explanation and Analysis—A Helping of Africa:
In Chapter 23, Margaret walks around the offices in Howards End where Henry Wilcox does his work for the West Africa Rubber Company and sees a map. Forster alludes to the colonial “Scramble for Africa” of the early 20th century in this passage, using metaphor and simile to characterize Africa as a meal or an animal that can be carved up:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] though the map over the fireplace did depict a helping of West Africa, it was a very ordinary map. Another map hung opposite, on which the whole continent appeared, looking like a whale marked out for blubber.
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Explanation and Analysis—Wilcox Estate:
In Chapter 23, when Margaret arrives at the Wilcox estate by herself for the first time, the scene features vivid visual and tactile imagery as well as simile and metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Then the car turned away, and it was as if a curtain had risen. [...] Tulips were a tray of jewels. She could not see the wych-elm tree, but a branch of the celebrated vine, studded with velvet knobs, had covered the porch. She had seldom been in a garden where the flowers looked so well, and even the weeds she was idly plucking out of the porch were intensely green.
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Chapter 26
Explanation and Analysis—Marriage like a Funeral:
In Chapter 26 Forster describes Margaret’s observations of Henry’s behavior while organizing his son's wedding. He uses a simile to imply Henry’s responses would be no different were he arranging a funeral. Forster then emphasizes this point with an ironic allusion. He describes Henry’s behaviour as:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] tact, of a sort—the sort that is as useful as the genuine, and saves even more situations at board-meetings. Henry treated a marriage like a funeral, item by item, never raising his eyes to the whole, and “Death, where is thy sting? Love, where is thy victory?” one would exclaim at the close.
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Chapter 43
Explanation and Analysis—Stars Beckoning:
Margaret's vision of her life becomes clearer in Chapter 43 after the dramatic events of Leonard's death and the “turmoil” that follows. Forster uses a simile to describe the change in her “vision” of these circumstances:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As a prisoner looks up and sees stars beckoning, so she, from the turmoil and horror of those days, caught glimpses of the diviner wheels.
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