Invisible Man: Similes 11 key examples

In describing the “hole” in which he lives after being chased by members of various political factions in New York, the narrator uses both simile and metaphor: 

Now don’t jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a “hole” it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole. And remember, a bear retires to his hole for the winter and lives until spring; then he comes strolling out like the Easter chick breaking from its shell. I say all this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I’m invisible and live in a hole, I am dead. I am neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation.

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In his description of the torturous battle royal which he is pressured to participate in by a group of locally prominent white men, the narrator uses both simile and imagery: 

Blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had no dignity. I stumbled about like a baby or a drunken man. The smoke had become thicker and with each new blow it seemed to sear and further restrict my lungs. My saliva became like hot bitter glue. A glove connected with my head, filling my mouth with warm blood. It was everywhere. I could not tell if the moisture I felt upon my body was sweat or blood [...] Streaks of blue light filled the black world behind the blindfold.

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Using a simile, the narrator describes his grandfather’s dying words as being “like a curse.” Reflecting upon his own actions as a young man, he states that: 

When I was praised for my conduct I felt a guilt that in some way I was doing something that was really against the wishes of the white folks, that if they had understood they would have desired me to act just the opposite, that I should have been sulky and mean, and that that really would have been what they wanted [...] It made me afraid that some day they would look upon me as a traitor and I would be lost. Still I was more afraid to act any other way because they didn’t like that at all. The old man’s words were like a curse.

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While being chauffeured around the campus by the narrator, Mr. Norton acknowledges that one of his motives for donating to the unnamed historically Black college is to create a monument to his late daughter. The narrator uses a simile to describe the pleasant but old-fashioned clothing worn by Mr. Norton’s daughter in a photo: 

She was very beautiful, I thought at the time, so beautiful that I did not know whether I should express admiration to the extent I felt it or merely act polite. And yet I seemed to remember her, or someone like her, in the past. I know now that it was the flowing costume of soft, flimsy material that made for the effect; today, dressed in one of the smart, well-tailored, angular, sterile, streamlined, engine-turned, air-conditioned modern outfits you see in the women’s magazines, she would appear as ordinary as an expensive piece of machine-tooled jewelry and just as lifeless.

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The narrator uses a number of similes when describing a chaotic scene at the Golden Day, a seedy bar located near the college campus. A group of patients at a nearby mental hospital who frequent the bar have decided to strike back against the hospital orderly, named Supercargo, who has been assigned to keep them in line, brutally attacking him on the staircase after he attempts to restore order: 

Supercargo grabbed wildly at the balustrade as they snatched his feet from beneath him and started down. His head bounced against the steps making a sound like a series of gunshots as they ran dragging him by his ankles, like volunteer firemen running with a hose. The crowd surged forward. Halley yelled near my ear. I saw the man being dragged toward the center of the room.

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The narrator recounts a conversation with Dr. Bledsoe, president of the unnamed historically Black college that he attended for three years prior to being expelled. Bledsoe demands that the narrator accompany him as he attends to the injured Mr. Norton, a wealthy white donor to the college, and the narrator describes Bledsoe, in a simile, as a sculptor: 

“Don’t sit there,” he said. “Come with me!” 

Just inside the building I got another shock. As we approached a mirror Dr. Bledsoe stopped and composed his angry face like a sculptor, making it a bland mask, leaving only the sparkle of his eyes to betray the emotion that I had seen only a moment before. He looked steadily at himself for a moment; then we moved quietly down the silent hall and up the stairs.

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The narrator uses a simile that compares the wheel of a car to an “alien thing” after the chaotic and disorienting scene at the Golden Day bar. Driving Mr. Norton, the wealthy white college trustee, back to campus after he was attacked and later revived by members of a group of patients from a nearby mental hospital, the narrator states that: 

The wheel felt like an alien thing in my hands as I followed the white line of the highway. Heat rays from the late afternoon sun arose from the gray concrete, shimmering like the weary tones of a distant bugle blown upon still midnight air. In the mirror I could see Mr. Norton staring out vacantly upon the empty fields, his mouth stern, his white forehead livid where it had scraped the screen. And seeing him I felt the fear balled coldly within me unfold. What would happen now? What would the school officials say?

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Dr. Bledsoe, president of the unnamed Black college, sends the narrator to work in New York for the summer, though he secretly plans to expel him permanently. Upon experiencing the train in New York City for the first time, the narrator uses a simile and allusion to describe the busy and disorienting scene: 

The train seemed to plunge downhill now, only to lunge to a stop that shot me out upon a platform feeling like something regurgitated from the belly of a frantic whale. Wrestling with my bags, I swept along with the crowd, up the stairs into the hot street. I didn’t care where I was, I would walk the rest of the way.

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After presenting Young Emerson with a letter of introduction addressed to his father, Mr. Emerson, by college president Dr. Bledsoe, the narrator expects to receive a job. However, Young Emerson appears to be upset by the contents of the confidential letter and permits the narrator to read it. In the letter, Dr. Bledsoe uses a simile to describe his attempt to sabotage the narrator: 

This case represents, my dear Mr. Emerson, one of the rare, delicate instances in which one for whom we held great expectations has gone grievously astray, and who in his fall threatens to upset certain delicate relationships between certain interested individuals and the school. Thus, while the bearer is no longer a member of our scholastic family, it is highly important that his severance with the college be executed as painlessly as possible. I beg of you, sir, to help him continue in the direction of that promise which, like the horizon, recedes ever brightly and distantly beyond the hopeful traveler.

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Describing a cage full of exotic birds kept in the office of Mr. Emerson, a wealthy dealer in imported goods, the narrator uses multiple similes and rich imagery: 

The room was quiet as a tomb—until suddenly there was a savage beating of wings and I looked toward the window to see an eruption of color, as though a gale had whipped up a bundle of brightly colored rags. It was an aviary of tropical birds set near one of the broad windows [...] A large bird began a song, drawing my eyes to the throbbing of its bright blue, red and yellow throat. It was startling and I watched the surge and flutter of the birds as their colors flared for an instant like an unfurled oriental fan.

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After being the victim of sabotage by the paranoid and hostile factory foreman Lucius Brockway, the narrator wakes up in a hazy state in a bizarre hospital-like environment, where he observes medical personnel hovering above him through a glass surface. In his description of this surreal scene, he uses a series of similes and metaphors related to water. 

Faces hovered above me like inscrutable fish peering myopically through a glass aquarium wall. I saw them suspended motionless above me, then two floating off, first their heads, then the tips of their finlike fingers, moving dreamily from the top of the case. A thoroughly mysterious coming and going, like the surging of torpid tides. I watched the two make furious movements with their mouths. I didn’t understand. They tried again, the meaning still escaping me [...] 

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