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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
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Molten Core :
The neighborhood boys use hyperbole, simile, and imagery in their recollection of the only party thrown at the Lisbon household, which is held in the basement-level rec room (or recreation room) of the house:
The steps were metal-tipped and steep, and as we descended, the light at the bottom grew brighter and brighter, as though we were approaching the molten core of the earth. By the time we reached the last step it was blinding. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead; table lamps burned on every surface. The green and red linoleum checkerboard flamed beneath our buckled shoes. On a card table, the punch bowl erupted lava. The paneled walls gleamed, and for the first few seconds the Lisbon girls were only a patch of glare like a congregation of angels.
As they descend the stairs into the overly-bright rec room, they hyperbolically feel as if they "were approaching the molten core of the earth," an exaggerated description that calls the accuracy of their recollections into account. Here, they employ vivid imagery, noting the "blinding" fluorescent lights that "buzzed overhead," the "green and red linoleum checkerboard" of the floor, and the gleaming "paneled walls" of the room. As they look toward the girls through the glare of this light, they appear to the neighborhood boys "like a congregation of angels," a simile that underscores the boys' exaggerated idealization of the Lisbon sisters, whom they fail to perceive as actual people.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Like an Animal :
The novel employs a simile that compares Cecilia to an "animal with a bell on its collar" following her first, unsuccessful suicide attempt:
Mrs. Lisbon heard her going back and forth between her sisters’ two bedrooms (Bonnie shared with Mary, Therese with Lux). The rattling of her bracelets comforted her parents because it allowed them to keep track of her movements like an animal with a bell on its collar. From time to time during the hours before we arrived, Mr. Lisbon heard the tinkling of Cecilia’s bracelets as she went up and down the stairs, trying on different shoes. According to what they told us later on separate occasions and in separate states, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon didn’t find Cecilia’s behavior strange during the party.
After Cecilia returns home from the hospital, her parents keep a close eye on her. She wears a number of bracelets that both cover the scars on her wrists and rattle loudly, which "comforted her parents because it allowed them to keep track of her movements like an animal with a bell on its collar." This simile, which imagines Cecilia as a household pet, emphasizes the sense of captivity that marks the lives of Cecilia and her sisters, whose parents impose strict regulations on their activities and whereabouts. Some characters, including the psychiatrist with whom Cecilia speaks at the hospital, connect the various suicides in the family to Mr. and Mrs. Lisbons attempts to control the lives of their daughters, though the girls' motives are never conclusively identified in the novel.
Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—The Lisbon House :
On the evening of the homecoming dance, the Lisbon sisters' dates drive around while waiting for Lux to return home. Though they are briefly elated to see a light in her bedroom window, they soon sense that the sisters have been punished as a result of Lux arriving home after the curfew. Reflecting on the fateful night years later, the neighborhood boys use a simile that compares the closing window shades of the bedroom to "eyelids":
As they approached the Lisbons’ house, they saw a light burning in a bedroom window. Parkie Denton held up his hand for the other boys to slap. “Pay dirt,” he said. But their jubilation was short-lived. For even before the car stopped they knew what had happened. “It hit me in the pit of my stomach that those girls weren’t going on any more dates,” Kevin Head told us years later. “The old bitch had locked them up again. Don’t ask me how I knew. I just did.” The window shades had closed like eyelids and the shaggy flower beds made the house look abandoned.
Throughout the novel, Mrs. Lisbon has exerted an intense degree of control over the lives of her daughters, only allowing them to attend the dance because Mr. Lisbon, a teacher at the school, is one of the chaperones. Earlier, a psychiatrist linked Cecilia's suicide to the girls' state of isolation and suggested that Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon should allow their daughters a greater degree of freedom. When Lux cannot be found at the end of the dance, however, the sisters and their dates return to the Lisbon family household without her. Years later, Kevin Heard recalls feeling that "those girls weren’t going on any more dates," a prediction that soon proves accurate. The neighborhood boys, summarizing the developments of that evening years later, note that "the window shades had closed like eyelids," a simile that underscores the isolation of the Lisbon sisters, whose household is now fully shut off from the world around it.
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Disease :
Eugenides employs a simile and an extended metaphor in order to express the widespread belief in their hometown that Cecilia's suicide was akin to an infectious disease that ultimately spread ot her sisters:
Already Cecilia’s suicide had assumed in retrospect the stature of a long-prophesied event [...] Her suicide, from this perspective, was seen as a kind of disease infecting those close at hand. In the bathtub, cooking in the broth of her own blood, Cecilia had released an airborne virus which the other girls, even in coming to save her, had contracted. No one cared how Cecilia had caught the virus in the first place. Transmission became explanation [...] Spiky bacteria lodged in the agar of the girls’ throats. In the morning, a soft oral thrush had sprouted over their tonsils.
When Lux feigns a burst appendix in order to visit the hospital and take a pregnancy test, she meets with Dr. Hornicker, who had previously met with Cecilia after her suicide attempt. After the other sisters commit suicide, Dr. Hornicker advances a theory that Cecilia's sisters suffered from PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, following Cecilia's death. Many in the neighborhood come to think of Cecilia's suicide "as a kind of disease," a simile that reflects their desire for a scientific explanation for these otherwise inexplicable acts.
Further developing this notion through an extended metaphor, the neighborhood boys state that, in the local imagination, Cecilia "released an airborne virus which the other girls, even in coming to save her, had contracted." Nobody can ultimately explain "how Cecilia had caught the virus in the first place," but they are satisfied with their conclusion that she was the source of the infection, which quickly spread to her sisters. Ultimately, this language of illness, viruses, and bacteria reflects one of many attempts bye characters in the novel to "solve" the mystery surrounding the sisters' actions.
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Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Ms. Perl's Column:
In a passage that satirizes tabloid journalism, the neighborhood boys use a simile that compares the Lisbon sisters to “automatons” (or robots) when summarizing the attitudes of Miss Perle, a local reporter who is interested in the deaths of the Lisbon sisters:
The newspapers, later writing about what they termed a “suicide pact,” treated the girls as automatons, creatures so barely alive that their deaths came as little change. In the sweep of Ms. Perl’s accounts [...] the girls appear as indistinguishable characters marking black x’s on a calendar or holding hands in self-styled Black Masses. Suggestions of satanism, or some mild form of black magic, haunt Ms. Perl’s calculations. She made much of the record-burning incident, and often quoted rock lyrics that alluded to death or suicide.
The neighborhood boys, who have spent much of the novel attempting to understand the enigmatic Lisbon sisters, resent what they consider to be the poor reporting on the case by Ms. Perle, whom they feel has sacrificed accuracy for lurid details that will catch the attention of readers. Further, they claim that Ms. Perle thought of the girls “as automatons“ a simile that suggests that Ms. Perle has failed to take into account the individuality and liveliness of the girls as well as the clear sense of intention underlying their suicide pact.
In this passage, Eugenides also satirizes the type of sensational journalism represented by Ms. Perle, who reaches for clichéd and unconvincing explanations for the girls’ shocking act. In her report on the suicides, she suggests that the sisters were influenced by Satanism or rock music. In the 1970s and 1980s, tabloid journalists regularly reported sensational and exaggerated stories about teenagers joining Satanic cults while under the influence of rock music or heavy metal in order to drum up interest from anxious adult readers. Though Ms. Perle's understanding of the girls is superficial, the neighborhood boys also fail to come up with a convincing explanation for the suicides.
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