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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
Explanation and Analysis—Movie Blackout:
Early in the first book, Bigger miserably walks down the street, questioning whether to take the job at the Dalton house. As he walks, he sees a poster of Buckley, who is running for State's Attorney again. The poster is beguiling and includes a telling simile:
The poster showed one of those faces that looked straight at you and when you looked at it and all the while you were walking and turning your head to look at it it kept looking unblinkingly back at you until you got so far from it you had to take your eyes away, and then it stopped, like a movie blackout. Above the top of the poster were tall red letters: YOU CAN'T WIN!
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Explanation and Analysis—A Knothole in the Fence:
As Bigger talks to Gus early in Book 1, he uses a series of simple observations and similes that, taken together, are a concise and compelling description of what it was like to be Black in America in the 1930s:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Every time I think about it I feel like somebody's poking a red-hot iron down my throat. Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live here. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like living in jail. Half the time I feel like I'm on the outside of the world peeping through a knothole in the fence....
Related Themes:
Book 2
Explanation and Analysis—Deep and Wayward:
Bigger feels that his entire life changed after he killed Mary Dalton. As he walks to the Dalton's house on Sunday morning to check on the state of Mary's body in the furnace, he thinks to himself about his new outlook. The narrative uses two similes in this moment:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Like a man reborn, he wanted to test and taste each thing now to see how it went; like a man risen up well from a long illness, he felt deep and wayward whims.
Related Themes:
