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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 Souls of Black Folk
Chapter 1: Of Our Spiritual Strivings
Explanation and Analysis—Will-O'-The-Wisp:
In the following passage from Chapter 1, Du Bois complains that Black people have not yet found their freedom in the years since the American Civil War. He utilizes simile to outline the Black journey for the reader:
The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude [Black Americans'] grasp — like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Stars:
In Chapter 1, Du Bois highlights the fact that many Black men wish to become, in his words, "co-worker[s] in the kingdom of culture." He notes that this ability to resoundingly impact society has not, in the past, been absent or withheld from Black men; but rather, their work has been obscured. This he details through simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
Related Themes:
Chapter 2: Of the Dawn of Freedom
Explanation and Analysis—The Color Line:
At the end of Chapter 2, Du Bois chronicles the "death" of the Freedmen's Bureau, and with it the aspirations of recently liberated Black Americans. He states that in his own day and age, the specter of the work this bureau "did not do because it could not" remains; and the present "color-line" is the result of this inadequacy. Du Bois outlines the color line with characteristic imagery and simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I have seen a land right merry with the sun, where children sing, and rolling hills lie like passioned women wanton with harvest. And there in the King's Highway sat and sits a figure veiled and bowed, by which the traveler's footsteps hasten as they go. On the tainted air broods fear.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Guiding Star:
At the beginning of Chapter 2, Du Bois describes the Union army's advance into the Southern states, and the resulting trail of Black refugees that would follow in the soldiers' train. Notably, Du Bois contextualizes the movement of fugitive slaves through the use of simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+No sooner had the armies, East and West, penetrated Virginia and Tennessee than fugitive slaves appeared within their lines. They came at night, when the flickering campfires shone like vast unsteady stars along the black horizon: old men and thin, with grey and tufted hair; women, with frightened eyes, dragging whimpering hungry children; men and girls, stalwart and gaunt.
Related Themes:
Chapter 3: Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
Explanation and Analysis—Five Fingers:
Toward the beginning of Chapter 3, Du Bois includes a quotation from Booker T. Washington, whose general approach towards racism and reconstruction he disagrees with. In the following excerpt from the "Atlanta Compromise," Washington utilizes simile to outline the concept of "separate but equal" that would become the cornerstone of U.S. segregation policy:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5: Of the Wings of Atlanta
Explanation and Analysis—Atlanta:
Du Bois begins Chapter 5 with a reflection on the city of Atlanta, Georgia—a center for both education and industry, from which Black Americans are excluded. Du Bois describes Atlanta's "awakening" at the dawn of the Civil War, personifying the city as a woman:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Once, they say, even Atlanta slept dull and drowsy at the foot-hills of the Alleghenies, until the iron baptism of war awakened her with its sullen waters, aroused and maddened her, and left her listening to the sea. And the sea cried to the hills and the hills answered the sea, till the city rose like a widow and cast away her weeds, and toiled for her daily bread; toiled steadily, toiled cunningly.
