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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
Key Examples in The Glass Menagerie
Scene 3
Explanation and Analysis—The Homemaker's Companion:
To make some extra money for the family, Amanda begins conducting telephone campaigns to get subscribers “The Homemaker’s Companion” magazine. In the following passage from Scene 3, Williams utilizes imagery and a simile to draw a comparison between Amanda and the women she calls to solicit:
She conducted a vigorous campaign on the telephone, roping in subscribers to one of those magazines for matrons called The Homemaker’s Companion, the type of journal that features the serialized sublimations of ladies of letters who think in terms of delicate cuplike breasts, slim, tapering waists, rich, creamy thighs, eyes like wood smoke in autumn, fingers that soothe and caress like strains of music, bodies as powerful as Etruscan sculpture.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—A Gentleman Caller:
After Amanda discovers Laura has not been attending business college, she decides that the only way to secure a future for her daughter is to marry her off to a man. In the following narration from Scene 3, Tom uses a simile to explain how Amanda’s idea of a gentleman caller for Laura has become an illusion of aspiration for the Wingfield family:
Unlock with LitCharts A+After the fiasco at Rubicam’s Business College, the idea of getting a gentleman caller for Laura began to play a more and more important part in Mother’s calculations. It became an obsession. Like some archetype of the universal unconscious, the image of the gentleman caller haunted our small apartment [...] An evening at home rarely passed without some allusion to this image, this specter, this hope. . . . Even when he wasn’t mentioned, his presence hung in Mother’s preoccupied look and in my sister’s frightened, apologetic manner — hung like a sentence passed upon the Wingfields!
Related Themes:
Scene 6
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Piece of Glass:
In Scene 6, the Wingfields prepare for the arrival of their gentleman caller, Jim. Amanda dresses Laura in a soft dress, which is described in the following passage with imagery and a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The dress is colored and designed by memory. The arrangement of Laura’s hair is changed; it is softer and more becoming. A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting.
Related Themes:
Scene 7
Explanation and Analysis—Like Thunder:
In Scene 7, Laura and Jim reflect on when they were both in high school. Laura uses a simile to recall how her prosthetic leg sounded against the ground when she walked around:
Unlock with LitCharts A+JIM: I never heard any clumping.
LAURA [wincing at the recollection]: To me it sounded like — thunder!
JIM: Well, well, well, I never even noticed.
Explanation and Analysis—Like Dead Leaves:
At the end of Scene 7, Tom monologues to the audience much like he did in the play's first scene. After confessing that he did indeed abandon his family in St. Louis to pursue his own dreams, Tom reflects on the traveling he has done using simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches.
Related Themes:
