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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 Hairy Ape
Scene One
Explanation and Analysis—Men out of the Sea:
In the following passage, Paddy responds to Yank's sentiments regarding the ship and its relationship to his working class comrades. Notably, Paddy's view on the situation is very different from Yank's, and far less optimistic for the future. Using allusion and simile, Paddy contrasts his ideal view of the world with Yank's more modern, progressive understanding:
PADDY: Oh, to be back in the fine days of my youth, ochone! Oh, there was fine beautiful ships them days—clippers wid tall masts touching the sky—fine strong men in them—men that was sons of the sea as if ’twas the mother that bore them.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Romanticism and Nature:
Through the use of simile in the following Scene 1 passages, O'Neill highlights a particular modernist brand of nostalgia that sought to "return" to natural spaces as global industry expanded:
Unlock with LitCharts A+PADDY: Sun warming the blood of you, and wind over the miles of shiny green ocean like strong drink to your lungs.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Sound:
In the following passage from Scene 1, O'Neill uses simile to describe the aural quality of the working men's voices, likening them to "phonograph horns": loud and blaring, coarse and overbearing.
Unlock with LitCharts A+[The chorused word has a brazen metallic quality as if their throats were phonograph horns. It is followed by a general uproar of hard, barking laughter]
Related Themes:
Scene Two
Explanation and Analysis—Mildred:
In the following excerpt from the beginning of Scene 2, the audience is introduced to Mildred and her aunt, both of whom are wealthy. O'Neill romanticizes neither woman, and he doesn't romanticize their upper-class lifestyle, either. On the contrary, he directs a pair of brutal similes against them, generating an image of contrast between their supposed superior position and the reality of their behavior:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In the midst of this, these two incongruous, artificial figures, inert and disharmonious, the elder like a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge, the younger looking as if the vitality of her stock had been sapped before she was conceived, so that she is the expression not of its life energy but merely of the artificialities that energy had won for itself in the spending.
Related Themes:
Scene Four
Explanation and Analysis—Sound:
In the following passage from Scene 1, O'Neill uses simile to describe the aural quality of the working men's voices, likening them to "phonograph horns": loud and blaring, coarse and overbearing.
Unlock with LitCharts A+[The chorused word has a brazen metallic quality as if their throats were phonograph horns. It is followed by a general uproar of hard, barking laughter]
Related Themes:
