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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 Hunchback of Notre Dame
Book 2, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Wild Animal:
Quasimodo’s behavior becomes the subject of a simile in Book 2, Chapter 3, when Gringoire spots him at the public square. Chastened by an outraged Claude Frollo, who tears away the trappings of his fool’s papacy, the bell-ringer follows him away:
Quasimodo thereupon took up the rear and walked backwards behind the archdeacon, squat, scowling, monstrous, shaggy, bunching his limbs, licking his boar’s tusks, grunting like a wild animal and inducing great oscillations in the crowd by a look or a gesture.
Related Themes:
Book 4, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Docile Notre Dame:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame entertains a double simile in Book 4, Chapter 3, during its overview of Quasimodo’s relationship to the cathedral. In explaining the hunchback’s bell-ringing duties, the novel also captures his deep care for the cathedral:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And, under his hand indeed, the cathedral seemed a docile and obedient creature; it waited on his wishes before raising its great voice; it was possessed and filled by Quasimodo as by a familiar spirit. It was as if he made the vast edifice breathe. He was every where in it, in fact, in every part of the monument at once.
Related Themes:
Book 8, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Kite:
Like adoptee, like adopter: The Hunchback of Notre Dame does not make Quasimodo its only character to invite animal-like comparisons. When Claude Frollo enters Esmeralda's jail cell, the book uses a simile to compare him to a bird:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The priest eyed her like a kite which has long been circling high in the sky round a poor lark huddled amidst the corn, which has long and silently been contracting the fearsome circles of its flight, and then suddenly pounces on its prey like a lightning flash and holds it palpitating in its claws.
Related Themes:
Book 10, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Like Waves:
Book 10, Chapter 4, introduces a familiar simile as Quasimodo glimpses the rag-tag truant army that marches towards the Notre Dame. When Clopin Troullefou’s people descend upon the cathedral, the bell-keeper initially struggles to identify them:
Unlock with LitCharts A+…he thought there was something odd about the outline of the Quai de la Vieille Pelleterie, that there was movement at that point, that the line of the parapet, etched in black against the whiteness of the water, was not still and straight like that of the other quays, but undulating as he watched, like the waves of a river or the heads of a marching crowd.
