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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 1
Explanation and Analysis—Sharp Knobs:
At the very beginning of the novel, Aibileen describes Elizabeth Leefolt, her boss and the neglectful mother of Mae Mobley. Everything about Elizabeth is skinny, knobbly, and sharp. Aibileen implies that because of her thin body, she cannot soothe her baby well. This is mostly based on a pair of similes at the beginning of the passage below:
Her legs is so spindly, she look like she done growed em last week. Twenty-three years old and she lanky as a fourteen-year-old boy. Even her hair is thin, brown, see-through. She try to tease it up, but it only make it look thinner. Her face be the same shape as that red devil on the redhot candy box, pointy chin and all. Fact, her whole body be so full a sharp knobs and corners, it’s no wonder she can’t soothe that baby. Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Keeps Things Going:
In Chapter 1, Skeeter Phelan and Hilly Holbrook visit Elizabeth Leefolt for a luncheon. The three women discuss possible new legislation that would require every White-owned home to have a separate bathroom for the Black domestic servants. Skeeter shows the most sympathy for the housekeepers among the three women, and Aibileen notices this with some confusion. In Chapter 2, Aibileen questions whether she should write a prayer for Skeeter. In doing so, she uses a simile to describe prayer:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The thing is though, if I start praying for Miss Skeeter, I know that conversation gone continue the next time I see her. And the next and the next. Cause that’s the way prayer do. It’s like electricity, it keeps things going. And the bathroom situation, it just ain’t something I really want to discuss.
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Explanation and Analysis—Changing a Lightbulb:
In Chapter 2, Aibileen thinks back to the previous chapter when Skeeter asked her whether she wanted anything to change in Jackson. This was just after Skeeter, Hilly, and Elizabeth discussed how the Leefolts planned on building a new bathroom for Aibileen. Later, Aibileen describes Skeeter's beliefs about Jackson with an evocative simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Which reminds me a what I don’t want a think about, that Miss Leefolt’s building me a bathroom cause she think I’m diseased. And Miss Skeeter asking don’t I want to change things, like changing Jackson, Mississippi, gone be like changing a lightbulb.
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Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Bad Pecan:
In Chapter 9, Aibileen calls Skeeter and whispers nervously into the phone that she will sit for interviews for the book about Black domestic workers in Jackson, as long as Skeeter promises not to turn on her after it's published. Skeeter is thrilled, but the women dare not discuss the project much further, at risk of being overheard by Elizabeth or Skeeter's mother. Skeeter asks Aibileen one question and describes her answer using a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“I just…I have to ask you. What changed your mind?”
Aibileen doesn’t even pause. “Miss Hilly,” she says. I go quiet, thinking of Hilly’s bathroom plan and accusing the maid of stealing and her talk of diseases. The name comes out flat, bitter as a bad pecan.
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Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Like Cool Water:
Minny and Aibileen attend mass together in Chapter 10. Sitting next to each other during the service, Aibileen tries to convince Minny to participate in Skeeter's book. Though Minny does not want to involve herself with the project, she understands Skeeter and Aibileen's quest for the truth. She describes "truth" using a simile that introduces tactile imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I can’t believe Aibileen wants to tell Miss Skeeter the truth.
Truth.
It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up all my life.
Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.
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Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Knot Together:
In Chapter 13, Skeeter suspects that Hilly has searched through her bag and found something incriminating: either pamphlets on the Fourteenth Amendment and desegregation or, worse, her notes from her interviews with Aibileen. Skeeter and Hilly are old friends, and Skeeter is certain that she will know whether Hilly found them based on how she first acts when they see each other. Skeeter, as an aspiring journalist, is sharply observant of others' behavior throughout the novel. When Skeeter opens the door to the Holbrook home, Hilly seethes with quiet fury, as described in a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It is the first moment that will tell me everything. Hilly is an exceptional liar, except for the moment right before she speaks. Hilly opens the door. Her mouth is tight and red. I look down at her hands. They are knotted together like ropes. I’ve arrived too late. “Well, that was quick,” she says and I follow her inside. My heart is seizing inside my chest. I’m not sure I’m breathing at all.
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Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Witches' Fingernails:
In Chapter 14, in an extended meditation, Aibileen considers what would happen if Hilly or any of the White women of Jackson found out about Skeeter's book of interviews. In Aibileen's experience, White women don't simply beat, shoot, or otherwise directly harm or kill Black women. Instead, they have a number of other, more sinister methods, which Aibileen describes using a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A woman ain’t gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn’t pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn’t come burn my house down. No, white womens like to keep they hands clean.
They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.
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Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Jesus In There:
In Chapter 17, Minny finds Celia drinking out of an unmarked bottle. Celia sits alone in her bedroom, solemnly sipping, surrounded by empties. Minny is certain that Celia is an alcoholic and that her substance abuse is the cause of her unusual and erratic behavior. Celia seems to be lost in a drunken haze, as Minny describes using a simile, and the scene eventually comes to present a certain degree of situational irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Miss Celia picks a bottle up and looks at it like it’s Jesus in there and she can’t wait to get saved. She uncorks it, sips it, and sighs. Then she drinks three hard swallows and lays back on her fancy pillows.
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Chapter 19
Explanation and Analysis—Slowly and Perfectly:
In Chapter 19, Stuart visits Skeeter at the Phelans' home. Late in the evening, Charlotte, Skeeter's mother, decides finally to let the young lovers spend time alone. Charlotte leaves the room with a calculated gesture, which Skeeter describes using a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Finally, at half past nine, Mother smoothes her skirt, folds a blanket slowly and perfectly, like a cherished letter.
“Well, I guess it’s time for bed. I’ll let you young people alone. Eugenia?” She eyes me. “Not too late, now?”
I smile sweetly. I am twenty-three goddamn years old. “Of course not, Mama.”
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