When Steavens arrives at the Merricks’ house for Harvey’s funeral, he is shocked by the house’s unrefined nature as well as by Harvey’s family's unsophisticated behavior. Here, the narrator zooms in on the effect Mrs. Merrick’s presence has on Harvey (as well as the other people in attendance), using a simile in the process:
[Mrs. Merrick’s] heavy, black brows almost met across her forehead, her teeth were large and square, and set far apart—teeth that could tear. She filled the room; the men were obliterated, seemed tossed about like twigs in an angry water, and even Steavens felt himself being drawn into the whirlpool.
The narrator uses a simile in this passage to capture how, because of Mrs. Merrick’s dominating and aggressive presence, the men in the room “seemed tossed about like twigs in an angry water,” with Steavens himself feeling “drawn into the whirlpool.” This simile—combined with the horror-esque description of Mrs. Merrick having “teeth that could tear”—helps readers to understand why Harvey felt the need to escape Sand City for Boston. Mrs. Merrick is clearly not a woman who would have been sensitive to her son’s quiet, artistic nature. In fact, as becomes clear later in the story, Mrs. Merrick used to violently abuse Harvey when he was a child. Unlike the other townspeople of his generation who chose to stay in the Kansas prairie, Harvey left to find a place that valued him for the sensitive, artistic person that he was.
When the narrator introduces Mr. Merrick, they use imagery and a simile, as seen in the following passage:
Feeble steps were heard on the stairs, and an old man, tall and frail, odorous of pipe smoke, with shaggy, unkept grey hair and a dingy beard, tobacco stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly up to the coffin […] seeming so pained and embarrassed by his wife’s orgy of grief that he had no consciousness of anything else. He did not even glance toward the coffin, but continued to look at her with a dull, frightened, appealing expression, as a spaniel looks at the whip.
In the first part of the passage, the narrator uses a variety of imagery, helping readers to hear Mr. Merrick’s “feeble steps” on the stairs, smell the “pipe smoke” on him, and visualize him as a “tall and frail” man with “shaggy, unkept grey hair” and a “tobacco stained” mouth who moved “uncertainly.” All of these descriptions combine to communicate just how passive Harvey’s father is, as well as how poorly he cares for himself and his appearance.
The simile in this passage—in which the narrator describes how Mr. Merrick looked at his wife “as a spaniel looks at the whip”—underlines Mr. Merrick’s anxious, feeble nature and communicates that the reason for it may be the unhealthy relationship he is in with his dominating and aggressive wife. In fact, Mr. Merrick is so afraid of her that he cannot even focus on saying goodbye to his son, whose coffin has just arrived and is open right in front of him. Readers are meant to understand here that Harvey did not come from a healthy home, which is implied to be one of the reasons why he left Sand City and refused to return during his lifetime.
