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Setting
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
Part 1: The Last to See Them Alive
Explanation and Analysis—Willie-Jay's Letter:
Willie-Jay, an incarcerated man who serves as a clerk to the prison chaplain at Kansas State Penitentiary, uses logos, simile, and metaphor in his letter to Perry, which encourages him to leave behind his destructive anger and hatred of others:
Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they’re fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself—in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted.
Related Themes:
Part 2: Persons Unknown
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Puzzle:
Alvin Dewey, Special Agent of the Kansas Bureau of Investigations and Chief Investigator of the Clutter family murders, uses a simile that compares the mystery surrounding the crime to a puzzle:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The desk was littered with what Dewey hoped would some day constitute courtroom exhibits: the adhesive tape and the yards of cord removed from the victims [...] and photographs taken at the scene of the crime [...] In days to come, Dewey was to spend many hours examining these photographs, hoping that he might “suddenly see something,” that a meaningful detail would declare itself: “Like those puzzles. The ones that ask, ‘How many animals can you find in this picture?’ In a way, that’s what I’m trying to do. Find the hidden animals. I feel they must be there—if only I could see them.”
Part 3: Answer
Explanation and Analysis—Like Huntsmen:
Capote employs a simile that compares the Kansas Bureau of Investigations agents investigating the case of the Clutter family murders to silent hunters in his description of the tense atmosphere at the sheriff’s office in Garden City, the closest city to Holcomb:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The hurry-scurry, the angry hum of recent weeks had departed; a quivering stillness now permeated the premises. Mrs. Richardson, the office secretary and a very down-to-earth person, had acquired overnight a dainty lot of whispery, tiptoe mannerisms, and the men she served, the sheriff and his staff, Dewey and the imported team of K.B.I. agents, crept about conversing in hushed tones. It was as though, like huntsmen hiding in a forest, they were afraid that any abrupt sound or movement would warn away approaching beasts.
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Wife:
Shortly before Perry and Dick are apprehended in Las Vegas, Capote employs a simile that compares Dick, who wants to leave Perry, to a husband who plans to abandon his wife:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Waiting for Perry outside the post office, Dick was in excellent spirits; he had reached a decision that he was certain would eradicate his current difficulties and start him on a new road, with a new rainbow in view. The decision involved impersonating an Air Force officer [...] That was half the plot; the second half was: Goodbye, Perry. Dick was sick of him—his harmonica, his aches and ills, his superstitions, the weepy, womanly eyes, the nagging, whispering voice. Suspicious, self-righteous, spiteful, he was like a wife that must be got rid of. And there was but one way to do it: Say nothing—just go.
