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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
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Frozen Like Stone:
Right after Joe Rantz's father, Harry, explains that he is leaving with his wife Thula and the rest of their children, Brown makes use of a simile:
Joe froze. His gray-blue eyes locked onto his father’s face, suddenly blank and expressionless, like stone. Stunned, trying to take in what he had just heard, unable to speak, Joe reached out a hand and laid it on the rough-hewn cedar railing, steadying himself.
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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Everyone's Poor Cousin:
As Brown describes the competition to make the first freshman boat in Chapter 6, he uses a simile to address some of the struggles Rantz faces due to his socioeconomic status:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It didn’t help that [Joe Rantz] continued to feel like everyone’s poor cousin. With the weather remaining cool, he still had to wear his ragged sweater to practice almost every day, and the boys still teased him continuously for it.
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Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Boat Building as Religion:
As Pocock gives Rantz a tour of the shop where he works on shells, he compares building a boat to religion with a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Pocock] said for him the craft of building a boat was like religion. It wasn't enough to master the technical details of it. You had to give yourself up to it spiritually; you had to surrender yourself absolutely to it. When you were done and walked away from the boat, you had to feel that you had left a piece of yourself behind in it forever, a bit of your heart.
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Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Like Simon Legree:
In Chapter 13, Brown makes an allusion to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin through a simile comparing Bobby Moch to Simon Legree:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Moch drove those boys like Simon Legree with a whip. He had a deep baritone voice that was surprising in a man so small, and he used it to good effect, bellowing out commands with absolute authority.
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Explanation and Analysis—Pendulums and Seabirds:
Chapter 13 ends with Brown describing the first varsity race at the Pacific Coast Regatta—where University of Washington faces off against the University of California—using imagery and simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As they flew down the last few hundred yards, their eight taut bodies rocked back and forth like pendulums, in perfect synchronicity. Their white blades flashed above the water like the wings of seabirds flying in formation. With every perfectly executed stroke, the expanse between them and the now exhausted Cal boys widened. In airplanes circling overhead, press photographers struggled to keep both boats in the frame of a single shot.
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Chapter 18
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Living Thing:
Brown describes the American crew's rowing at the very end of the 1936 men's eight final with simile and imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In a daze, believing they were finally bearing down on the line, the boys threw their long bodies into each stroke, rowing furiously, flawlessly, and with uncanny elegance. Their oars were bending like bows, the blades entering and leaving the water cleanly, smoothly, efficiently, the shell’s whale-oil-slick hull ghosting forward between pulls, its sharp cedar prow slicing through dark water, boat and men forged together, bounding fiercely forward like a living thing.
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