Previous
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
Key Examples in The Red Badge of Courage
Similes
Explanation and Analysis—"Thought-Pictures":
Crane often uses metaphor to compare Henry’s thoughts to images or pictures, expressing the complex but confused nature of his inner life.
This metaphor is first evident when Crane describes Henry’s misconception of war as exciting and heroic, a belief formed from his limited understanding of history and classic literature like the poems of Homer. Here, Crane sums up Henry’s hazy knowledge of the past as “thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles." Henry’s ideas about what he might accomplish are “large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.” Just like his grasp on the past, Henry’s hopes for the future are hazy and imagistic, more like a picture than the explicit thoughts that Crane summarizes elsewhere in the book.
Related Themes:
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Tents:
In an early chapter of The Red Badge of Courage, Crane uses a simile to compare the campsites created by the Union army to plants and flowers:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Tents sprang up like strange plants. Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night.
Related Themes:
Chapter 18
Explanation and Analysis—The Broom:
Toward the end of the novel, Henry and Wilson overhear a general and another officer making plans to rebut an oncoming Confederate charge. The general asks the officer what troops he can spare, and the officer casually mentions their regiment. Insultingly referring to the soldiers as “mule-drivers,” the officer volunteers to deploy them on a dangerous action that will probably result in many deaths. Henry uses a simile to compare the regiment, in the officer’s conception, to a “broom.”
Unlock with LitCharts A+The officer spoke of the regiment as if he referred to a broom. Some part of the woods needed sweeping, perhaps, and he merely indicated a broom in a tone properly indifferent to its fate.
Related Themes:
