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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
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Boy:
When Jurgis is first introduced, the narrator provides a description of the protagonist that explains his character as a young man. The simile helps the readers understand Jurgis's simplicity and his unrefined, youthful innocence:
Jurgis was like a boy, a boy from the country. He was the sort of man the bosses like to get hold of, the sort they make it a grievance they cannot get hold of. When he was told to go to a certain place, he would go there on the run.
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Explanation and Analysis—Ten Thousand Sounds:
As Jurgis and his family arrive in Packingtown, the narrator uses auditory imagery and a simile of buzzing swarms to describe their first impressions of the place:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Then the party became aware of another strange thing. This, too, like the color, was a thing elemental; it was a sound, a sound made up of ten thousand little sounds. You scarcely noticed it at first—it sunk into your consciousness, a vague disturbance, a trouble. It was like the murmuring of the bees in the spring, the whisperings of the forest; it suggested endless activity, the rumblings of a world in motion.
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Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Icy Hands:
Jurgis's panic intensifies with his family's descent into poverty due to his workplace accident and the brutal winter. The narrator employs hyperbolic language and a simile that compares fear to a grasping hand to convey the overwhelming fear and despair that consume him:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The thought of this was like an icy hand at his heart; the thought that here, in this ghastly home of all horror, he and all those who were dear to him might lie and perish of starvation and cold, and there would be no ear to hear their cry, no hand to help them!
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Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—Steel Striking:
The narrator vividly describes Jurgis's observation of a child working metal at a steelworks factory. In this passage, Sinclair uses a simile and the sensory language of sound to compare the metallic ringing of steelworking to that of a train speeding through the dark:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The sounds of the bits of steel striking upon each other was like the music of an express train as one hears it in a sleeping car at night.
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Chapter 28
Explanation and Analysis—Socialist Storms:
When he unwittingly stumbles into an event that turns out to be a socialist rally, Jurgis is captivated by the presence of the speaker. The narrator compares the man's presence to forceful events in the natural world through a series of similes. Jurgis, watching the speech, thinks to himself:
Unlock with LitCharts A+What sort of a man was he? And what sort of thing was this, anyhow?—So all at once it occurred to Jurgis to look at the speaker. It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature—a mountain forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon a stormy sea.
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