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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
Similes
Explanation and Analysis—Dissolved Like Smoke:
As Mrs. Drover frets over memories of her fiancé, she tells herself that she doesn't remember what he "did" to make her "promise"—but it's unclear what, exactly, she promised. Nevertheless, the narrative contradicts Mrs. Drover's claim that she doesn't remember, using a simile to illustrate the extent to which the memory of her fiancé overtakes—and disconcerts—her in this moment:
What did he do, to make me promise like that? I can’t remember — But she found that she could.
She remembered with such dreadful acuteness that the twenty-five years since then dissolved like smoke and she instinctively looked for the weal left by the button on the palm of her hand.
It's possible that the "promise" Mrs. Drover originally refers to is her acceptance of the fiancé's marriage proposal. It's also possible that she's talking about her "promise" to wait for him while he was away at war. But there's also something ominous about whatever "promise" she made, perhaps suggesting that she agreed to something supernatural and strange—after all, the letter she has received begins by saying, "You will not have forgotten that today is our anniversary, and the day we said." The story never clarifies what the letter writer means by "the day we said," but it seems that Mrs. Drover has done everything she can to forget the eerie agreement she made with her fiancé.
And yet, her efforts are in vain, as made clear by the simile suggesting that the past 25 years "dissolve[] like smoke" as she remembers what her fiancé did to make her "promise." She wants to believe that she has put the fiancé behind her, but she can still feel the place on her hand where he painfully pressed a button against her skin—a visceral memory that effectively makes the life she has constructed for herself fade away, leaving her with the unsettled feeling that she never managed to escape her fiancé's influence.
Related Themes:
