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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 5 – The Betrothal
Explanation and Analysis—Dantès's Betrothal:
In Chapter 5, as Dumas begins to set the plot of his novel in motion, the reader comes to the dawning realization that the world might be out to get Dantès. In keeping with the frequent use of storm and water imagery to intensify the narrative, Dumas raises the suspense of Dantès's betrothal dinner by using a storm simile to focus on Fernand's obvious hostility towards Dantès and foreshadow the coming plot against the young captain. While Dantès himself remains quite oblivious to the threat, the reader cannot help but see it unfold before them in a heap of dramatic irony:
Fernand was shuffling on his chair, starting at the slightest noise and, from time to time, wiping large beads of sweat from his forehead, which seemed to have fallen there like the first drops of rain before a storm.
‘By heaven, neighbour,’ said Dantès, ‘[...] It’s true, Mercédès is not yet my wife, but [...] in an hour and a half, she will be!’
There was a gasp of surprise from everyone, except Old Dantès, who exhibited his fine set of teeth in a broad laugh. Mercédès smiled [...]. Fernand made a convulsive lunge towards the handle of his dagger.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15 – Number 34 and Number 17
Explanation and Analysis—The Power of the Storm:
In Chapter 15, Dantès reflects on his former life that he enjoyed before being stripped of his humanity and heartlessly imprisoned by Villefort's machinations against him. He uses a potent combination of personification, simile, and metaphor as he ruminates on his seafaring days as a young sailor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘Sometimes,’ he thought at such moments, ‘in my distant voyages, when I was still a man—and when that man, free and powerful, gave orders to others that they carried out—I used to see the sky open, the sea tremble and groan, a storm brewing in some part of the sky and thrashing the horizon with its wings like a giant eagle; then I would feel that my vessel was nothing but a useless refuge, itself shaking and shuddering, as light as a feather in the hand of a giant.'
Related Themes:
Chapter 58 – Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort
Explanation and Analysis—Noirtier's Inner Light:
In Chapter 58, Dumas invites the reader into a conversation with Noirtier, the old Monsieur de Villefort himself—an apparently ancient man who has lost the power of speech and movement but nonetheless retains his presence of mind. Dumas introduces Noirtier with a slew of literary devices, including hyperbole, metaphor, simile, and the imagery of light and darkness:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Motionless as a corpse, he greeted his children with bright, intelligent eyes .... Sight and hearing were the only two senses which, like two sparks, still lit up this human matter, already three-quarters remoulded for the tomb. Moreover, only one of these two senses could reveal to the outside world the inner life which animated this statue, and the look which disclosed that inner life was like one of those distant lights which shine at night, to tell a traveller in the desert that another being watches in the silence and the darkness.
Chapter 71 – Bread and Salt
Explanation and Analysis—From Malta, With Love:
In Chapter 71, the Count and Mercédès discuss their pasts as they walk around the Morcerf property. In a moment laden with dramatic irony, the Count shares a fabricated tale of a lost love and uses a simile to underscore his loss:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It is not my fault, Madame. In Malta I loved a girl and was going to marry her, when the war came and swept me away from her like a whirlwind. I thought that she loved me enough to wait for me, even to remain faithful to my tomb. When I came back, she was married.
Related Themes:
Chapter 80 – The Accusation
Explanation and Analysis—A Fearful Falling Star:
In Chapter 80, the Villefort family continues to crumble after the attempted poisonings of the Saint-Merans and Barrois. At the close of the chapter, Villefort comes to a startling realization about his wife, which Dumas conveys using simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+How odd it was! For all the confused feelings that he experienced on seeing [Valentine’s] tears, he also managed to observe Mme de Villefort; and it seemed to him that a faint, dark smile passed briefly across her thin lips, like one of those sinister meteors that can be glimpsed as they fall between two clouds against a stormy day.
Chapter 112 – Departure
Explanation and Analysis—The Count's Holy Vocation:
In the closing chapters of The Count of Monte Cristo, the Count attempts to wrap up the many, many loose ends he has accumulated over his decades-long quest for revenge. There's no question that the Count thinks quite highly of his grand plan against those who wronged him in his previous life as Dantès, all those years ago. In Chapter 112, as he reveals the depth of his ambitions to Mercédès, he uses a dramatic simile to convey this sense of grandeur:
Unlock with LitCharts A+From then on, that fortune seemed to me a holy vocation; from then on, there was not one further thought in me for that life, the sweetness of which you, poor woman, have sometimes partaken. Not an hour of calm, not a single hour. I felt myself driven like a cloud of flame through the sky to destroy the cities of the plain.
Related Themes:
