Previous
Setting
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
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Like A Crouching Beast:
The meaning of the novella's title, The Beast in the Jungle, becomes clear in Chapter 2 during a lengthy description of Marcher's convictions about his own fate:
Something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years, like a crouching Beast in the Jungle. It signified little whether the crouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The definite point was the inevitable spring of the creature; and the definite lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn’t cause himself to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger-hunt.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—A Hump on One's Back:
By comparing the knowledge of Marcher's fate to a hump on his back via simile, the narrator demonstrates the omnipresent effects of this new knowledge. This comparison appears in Chapter 2 amid a description of the growing friendship between May and Marcher:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Such a feature in one’s outlook was really like a hump on one’s back. The difference it made every minute of the day existed quite independently of discussion. One discussed of course like a hunchback, for there was always, if nothing else, the hunchback face. That remained, and she was watching him; but people watched best, as a general thing, in silence, so that such would be predominantly the manner of their vigil.
Related Themes:
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—May's Death:
At the beginning of Chapter 4, the narrator foreshadows May's death with a chilling description:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] May Bartram sat, for the first time in the year, without a fire; a fact that, to Marcher’s sense, gave the scene of which she formed part a smooth and ultimate look, an air of knowing, in its immaculate order and cold meaningless cheer, that it would never see a fire again. Her own aspect—he could scarce have said why—intensified this note. Almost as white as wax, with the marks and signs in her face as numerous and as fine as if they had been etched by a needle, with soft white draperies[...]
Related Themes:
