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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
Book 1: Matchmaking
Explanation and Analysis—Creature:
In the following example of simile from Chapter 2, Desdemona imagines herself and Lefty as a "four-legged, two-headed creature":
Early on, the emotional sympathy she’d felt with Lefty had been so absolute that she’d sometimes forgotten they were separate people. As kids they’d scrabbled down the terraced mountainside like a four-legged, two-headed creature. She was accustomed to their Siamese shadow springing up against the whitewashed house at evening, and whenever she encountered her solitary outline, it seemed cut in half.
This description draws not only on the imagery of mutation, but on the imagery of hermaphroditism/intersexuality/transgender identity—the idea of two people, of different genders or sexes, existing within the same body. Desdemona envisions herself and Lefty not as two separate people coexisting within one body, but simply as a singular body with no division or internal fragmentation.
Contrast this imagery with that of Cal/lie, a single person in a single body who nonetheless feels fragmented. Cal/lie's two bodies are not combined into a single form, like those of their grandparents in Desdemona's description in this passage. Cal/lie is at odds with themselves, divided into two people who refuse to combine into one. Where Desdemona's feelings are positive—about the connection she feels with her brother—Cal/lie's are negative, causing strife and upset as they struggle to reconcile Cal and Callie.
Related Themes:
Book 1: An Immodest Proposal
Explanation and Analysis—Resurfacing:
Toward the beginning of Chapter 3, Cal reflects on his current life in Berlin, utilizing simile to compare his past life as Callie to his present one:
I’ve lived more than half my life as a male, and by now everything comes naturally. When Calliope surfaces, she does so like a childhood speech impediment. Suddenly there she is again, doing a hair flip, or checking her nails. It’s a little like being possessed. Callie rises up inside me, wearing my skin like a loose robe. She sticks her little hands into the baggy sleeves of my arms.
Cal compares Calliope, his past self, to a childhood speech impediment. He indirectly compares his past self to a ghost that "possesse[s]" him from time to time, as though it is wearing Cal's body as a costume. Cal feels as if there is another person inside of him, lying dormant, waiting to resurface.
This passage touches on Cal's feelings of internal disconnect as an adult. Most people take on different personality traits or interests during different periods of their lives, leading to certain level of dissonance. Cal's disconnect goes one step further: he feels like he is literally two separate people. At this point in the novel, he cannot mend the gap between Callie and Cal. He cannot see those two individuals as himself, as fundamentally the same person.
Related Themes:
Book 1: The Silk Road
Explanation and Analysis—Winged Victory:
After Lefty and Desdemona marry in Chapter 4, they retreat inside a covered lifeboat that doubles as their marital bed. Lefty undresses her, realizing that Desdemona smuggled more than silkworms onboard: she wears their mother's corset under her clothes. In an example of both simile and allusion, Cal/lie compares her corset-clad grandmother to the famous Greek statue, Winged Victory of Samothrace:
In the lifeboat, the corset absorbed all available moonlight, with the odd result that Desdemona’s face, head, and arms disappeared. She looked like Winged Victory, tumbled on her back, being carted off to a conqueror’s museum. All that was missing was the wings.
Though originally from Samothrace in Greece, Winged Victory resides in the Lourve after being stolen (or, put euphemistically, "acquired") by the French in 1884. Winged Victory actually still possesses her wings; the statue does not, however, have a head. The statue is a representation of Nike, ancient Greek goddess of victory (usually related to battle, though Nike's powers extended to other contests).
The above metaphor is in some ways odd and contradictory. On the one hand, it envisions Desdemona as a goddess of victory, powerful and brave. Yet at the same time, she lies captive, ready to be "carted off to a conqueror's museum." This imagery captures Desdemona's simultaneous feelings of freedom and entrapment in her chosen relationship.
Book 2: Henry Ford’s English-Language Melting Pot
Explanation and Analysis—Trees:
In the following example of imagery and simile, Cal/lie compares the exhaust stacks at the auto plant to a "grove of trees":
The main building, a fortress of dark brick, was seven stories high, the smokestacks seventeen. Running off it were two chutes topped by water towers. These led to observation decks and to adjoining refineries studded with less impressive stacks. It was like a grove of trees, as if the Rouge’s eight main smokestacks had sown seeds to the wind, and now ten or twenty or fifty smaller trunks were sprouting up in the infertile soil around the plant.
This imagery is rather ironic, considering the number of trees likely cut down to construct the plant and the amount of pollution such a manufacturing enterprise produces. In a manner of speaking, these smokestacks are the new trees of the industrial age, replacing the trees harvested and cleared for the construction of brick-and-mortar monstrosities.
Nature has been reborn into industry, each of the larger smokestacks sowing their seeds and producing hundreds of similar factories around Detroit. These trees, paradoxically, grow from "infertile soil." The ground from which the smokestacks blossom is likely polluted by industrial chemicals, and therefore "infertile" to any organic vegetation.
Related Themes:
