Definition of Simile
When introducing readers to the rehabilitation machine that he is forced to use at the military hospital in Milan during World War I, the narrator uses a simile, as seen in the following passage:
My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from the knee to the ankle without a calf, and the machine was to bend the knee and make it move as in riding a tricycle. But it did not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending part.
When describing the three wounded Italian soldiers with whom he spent time, the narrator uses a simile, as seen in the following passage:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I was a friend, but I was never really one of them after they had read the citations, because it had been different with them and they had done very different things to get their medals […] The three with the medals were like hunting-hawks; and I was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk to those who had never hunted; they, the three, knew better and so we drifted apart.