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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
Similes
Explanation and Analysis—Pits of Flame:
In this passage, which introduces where Hugh works at the mill, the narrator depicts a dramatic scene of nighttime industrial labor using the visual imagery of flames and several similes. Describing Hugh’s workplace, Davis writes:
Fire in every horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames writhing in tortuous streams through the sand…and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of glittering fire. It was like a street in Hell.
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Explanation and Analysis—Arctic Air:
As Mitchell, Kirby, and Dr. May discuss the Kerl-woman stature with Hugh, the author uses a simile to characterize the young visiting industrialist’s distant and unfeeling perspective:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the two.
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Explanation and Analysis—World-Cancer:
As Hugh wanders miserably through the night, the author uses simile and metaphor to convey the disconnect between the preacher's message and the reality of a mill-worker's hardscrabble life:
Unlock with LitCharts A+His words passed far over the furnace-tender's grasp, toned to suit another class of culture; they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown tongue. He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart of the Welsh puddler he had failed.
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Explanation and Analysis—Limp, Dirty Rag:
Having gone to find Hugh and bring him food as he works at the furnaces, Deborah lies down on a pile of warm ashes to sleep:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp, dirty rag,—yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime. Deeper yet if one could look, was there nothing worth reading in this wet, faded thing, halfcovered with ashes? no story of a soul filled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfishness, fierce jealousy?
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