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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
Volume 2, Book 3: Accomplishment of the Promise Made to the Dead Woman
Explanation and Analysis—Cosette as a Creature:
As the Thenardiers strive to squeeze as much money as possible from their guests, they force young and innocent Cosette to do all of their physical labor. With a simile, the narrator emphasizes Cosette's constant sense of dread:
Such were these two beings. Cosette was between them, subjected to their double pressure, like a creature who is at the same time being ground up in a mill and pulled to pieces with pincers. [...]
Cosette ran upstairs and down, washed, swept, rubbed, dusted, ran, fluttered about, panted, moved heavy articles, and weak as she was, did the coarse work. There was no mercy for her; a fierce mistress and venomous master. The Thénardier hostelry was like a spider’s web, in which Cosette had been caught, and where she lay trembling. The ideal of oppression was realized by this sinister household. It was something like the fly serving the spiders.
Explanation and Analysis—Feminine Childhood:
As Eponine, Azelma, and Cosette play, they dress things up as dolls. While Eponine and Azelma treat the cat as a doll, though, Cosette dresses up a sword. The narrative uses a simile to compare this kind of play to birds making nests:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As birds make nests out of everything, so children make a doll out of anything that comes to hand. While Eponine and Azelma were bundling up the cat, Cosette, on her side, had dressed up her sword. That done, she laid it in her arms, and sang to it softly, to lull it to sleep.
The doll is one of the most imperious needs and, at the same time, one of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. […] While dreaming and chattering, making tiny outfits, and baby clothes, while sewing little gowns, and corsages and bodices, the child grows into a young girl, the young girl into a big girl, the big girl into a woman. The first child is the continuation of the last doll.
Volume 4, Book 2: Eponine
Explanation and Analysis—Dreaming as a Drug:
As Marius roams the Latin Quarter, aimless and poor, he dreams of Cosette. The narrator uses a simile to describe the bliss of dreaming:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind at labor, which are sometimes severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapor which corrects the over-harsh contours of pure thought, fills in gaps here and there, binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas. But too much dreaming sinks and drowns. Woe to the brain worker who allows himself to fall entirely from thought into reverie! He thinks that he can reascend with equal ease, and he tells himself that, after all, it is the same thing. Error!
Volume 4, Book 3: The House in the Rue Plumet
Explanation and Analysis—The Advent of Beauty:
Once a wretched and mistreated servant of the Thenardiers, Cosette has much changed in the loving care of Jean Valjean. Cosette grows up to become a beautiful young lady, to which she expresses her surprise with imagery and a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was beautiful and lovely; she could not help agreeing with Toussaint and her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown white, her hair was lustrous, an unaccustomed splendor had been lighted in her blue eyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant, like the sudden advent of daylight;[…] she descended to the garden again, thinking herself a queen, imagining that she heard the birds singing, though it was winter, seeing the sky gilded, the sun among the trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in inexpressible delight.
