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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
Prologue
Explanation and Analysis—Flags Flown:
In Orange's Prologue essay, he describes a variety of notable "Indian heads" throughout history, from the murder of Massasoit in 1621, to the massacre of Pequots in 1637, to a story of a state-sponsored killing from an 1854 novel. In all three of these cases, the head of the decapitated Native American was displayed for public view. Orange describes the reason for these gruesome displays in a simile:
The Indian head in the jar, the Indian head on a spike were like flags flown, to be seen, cast broadly. Just like the Indian Head test pattern was broadcast to sleeping Americans as we set sail from our living rooms, over the ocean blue-green glowing airwaves, to the shores, the screens of the New World.
Related Themes:
Part I: Tony Loneman (1)
Explanation and Analysis—Like Bugs:
In the first chapter of the novel, Tony and Maxine read together before going to bed. Tony struggles with this due to his dyslexia. He describes his difficulties with reading using a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Maxine makes me read to her before she goes to sleep. I don’t like it because I read slow. The letters move on me sometimes, like bugs. Just whenever they want, they switch places. But then sometimes the words don’t move. When they stay still like that, I have to wait to be sure they’re not gonna move, so it ends up taking longer for me to read them than the ones I can put back together after they scramble.
Related Themes:
Part I: Edwin Black (1)
Explanation and Analysis—Figure Out a Brain:
Edwin Black is a well-educated man who is addicted to the internet and lives in his mother's basement. Early in the first chapter from his perspective in Part I, he describes how he gets "obsessed" with certain ideas and researches them incessantly. In this passage he tells about his obsessive research into the brain, in addition to how the internet has changed people's brains. He uses an evocative simile to make his point:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Lately I’ve become a little obsessed with the brain. With trying to find explanations for everything as it relates to the brain and its parts. There’s almost too much information out there. The internet is like a brain trying to figure out a brain. I depend on the internet for recall now. There’s no reason to remember when it’s always just right there, like the way everyone used to know phone numbers by heart and now can’t even remember their own. Remembering itself is becoming old-fashioned.
Related Themes:
Part II: Calvin Johnson (1)
Explanation and Analysis—Ax to Grind:
Early in Part II, Calvin describes his sister and mother, who both have bipolar disorder, with a simile about axes in a forest. The simile is intentionally convoluted to represent the difficulty and uncertainty of life with a serious mental disorder:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Being bipolar is like having an ax to grind with an ax you need to split the wood to keep you warm in a cold dark forest you only might eventually realize you’ll never make your way out of. That’s the way Maggie put it. She got it like me and my brother didn’t. But she’s medicated. Managed. Maggie, she’s like the key to the history of our lives. Me and my brother, Charles, we hate and love her like you end up feeling about anyone nearest to you who’s got it.
Related Themes:
Part II: Interlude
Explanation and Analysis—Stray Bullet:
In the Interlude, the narrator describes how shootings can happen anywhere. No one expected a calamitous event to happen at the powwow, but shootings are random, terrible events. Orange uses some violent imagery, followed by a simile, to describe a bullet in such a shooting:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A bullet is a thing so fast it’s hot and so hot it’s mean and so straight it moves clean through a body, makes a hole, tears, burns, exits, goes on, hungry, or it remains, cools, lodges, poisons. When a bullet opens you up, blood pours like out of a mouth too full. A stray bullet, like a stray dog, might up and bite anyone anywhere, just because its teeth were made to bite, made to soften, tear through meat, a bullet is made to eat through as much as it can.
