J. pompously instructs the reader to get rid of things they don't need, but his opinions on owning things don’t seem very consistent. In chapter 3, the author employs metaphor, simile, and situational irony to convey J.'s hypocritical perspective on material possessions. As he is frantically packing for the Thames trip, J. laments:
oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! – the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!
Previously J. has referred to material things as "lumber,” useless weight that stops people from achieving their potential. The way he uses this metaphor suggests that material possessions are burdensome and cumbersome, hindering rather than enhancing one's life. The simile he uses here adds to this expression of discontent. He sanctimoniously criticizes the plentiful luxuries and pleasures of his, George’s, and Harris’s life, comparing their “luxury” to a criminal's iron crown. The iron crown is an archaic form of physical punishment which involved tightening a metal band around a wrongdoer's head. As J. says, it "makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it." Having too many material things is a horrible, aching burden, J. implies, and to divest oneself of them all is the only way to be truly free.
Of course, this is full of situational irony, as J. is frantically packing lots of lovely things into bags, and the men consume an enormous amount of luxury goods on their trip. This disingenuous advice just highlights the difference between his words and actions. The irony is further enhanced by the notion that luxury items are “burdens.” J. and his friends are going on a long holiday and have never worried about access to money. Even as he decries it, J. is packing more and more “lumber." The oxymoronic phrases "luxuries that only cloy" and "pleasures that bore" also emphasize the paradoxical nature of having too much luxury. Here, J. is suggesting that what is typically considered desirable and enjoyable can, in fact, become tiresome and unfulfilling. This is another moment where Jerome lampoons middle-class privilege. J. is actually self-pityingly complaining that he can’t enjoy his nice things anymore because he’s too used to them.
As the "three men" decide what to pack, J. tells an anecdote about the time he made the ill-fated decision to deliver some incredibly stinky cheese for a friend. He combines verbal irony and hyperbole to amplify the comic effect of this tall tale, where his good intentions end in disaster:
I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It was a ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned a corner.
The reader can feel the verbal irony in J.'s tongue-in-cheek description of the cab's speed, referring to it as a "shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built." Steamrollers are deliberately slow, so the language he’s using is contradictory for comic effect. This ironic statement speaks to the infuriatingly sluggish pace of the cab, which is the opposite of what J. had hoped for in order to save time.
The hyperbole of the passage further emphasizes the slow and cumbersome nature of the cheese trip; it's not just the "steam-roller" which is slow. J. goes as far as to say that rather than being pulled by a healthy horse, the cab was "dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded somnambulist"—a sleepwalker. Everything about the journey is humorously, maddeningly time-consuming. Jerome adds insult to injury in his depiction of J.'s frustration by throwing in a simile, saying that the mood of the scene was "merry as a funeral bell." As few things are less merry than funeral bells, this simile only exaggerates the irony of the cab’s dismal progress.
As they pass through Kingston, J. uses both personification and simile to describe the vibrant atmosphere of spring on a particularly beautiful day:
It was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care to take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deeper green; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange, wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood.
J. is thoroughly enjoying the beautiful weather, using a simile to liken the change from spring to summer to a young woman coming into maturity. The personification of the year as a "fair young maid" imbues the season with human-like qualities, emphasizing its energy and freshness. Through this personification, J. suggests that the spring day in Kingston is alive and filled with potential. It’s brimming with life, like a young woman on the verge of adulthood. The simile’s use of the word "trembling" conveys a sense of anticipation and excitement, as if both the young woman and the year were on the cusp of bursting and unfolding. All of the imagery echoes this; the green grass "blushes," and and the grass is coated with a "dainty sheen." This combination of personification and simile is intense and appealing, making Kingston itself seem like a very attractive prospect.
In Chapter 9 George has made a hideous mess of the tow-line. J. uses a simile to describe George's attempt to untangle it, which does not go well:
Harris had lifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George’s hand. George had taken it firmly and held it away from him, and had begun to unravel it as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a new-born infant; and, before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing was more like a badly made doormat than anything else.
Here, J. is comparing George’s careful handling of the line to unwrapping a baby from swaddling clothes. "Swaddling" is the practice of wrapping a baby in a long, thin blanket, which some infants find soothing. It has to be done very carefully, as babies are delicate. It doesn’t matter how careful George is with the tow-line, however, as he ends up destroying it while trying to fix it. The simile humorously points to the contrast between George's initial delicate approach and the disastrous outcome of his efforts. By comparing the unwrapping of the tow-line to the gentle process of unwrapping a newborn, Jerome stresses how cautious and tender George is being with it. However, this careful approach quickly goes awry, as the line becomes even more tangled, resembling a "badly made doormat" rather than the neatly unwound rope George had intended to produce. George’s confidence seems very misplaced, and the reader can easily visualize the transformation from a carefully unwrapped bundle to a chaotic, matted mess.
In this somber passage from Three Men in a Boat, the author uses personification, metaphor, and simile to describe the effect of the absence of sunlight on the English landscape:
Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature. Mother Earth looks at us with such dull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has died away from out of her. It makes us sad to be with her then; she does not seem to know us or to care for us. She is as a widow who has lost the husband she loved, and her children touch her hand, and look up into her eyes, but gain no smile from her.
J., in his melancholy musing, portrays Nature as a grieving mother. He personifies this "Mother" as having "dull, soulless eyes" in the absence of sunlight. Depicting the landscape around him as having human-like characteristics makes its "sadness" seem clearer to the reader. This human-like characterization of Nature is amplified by the simile Jerome uses. He has the reader picture her "as a widow who has lost the husband she loved." This appeals to readers' sense of empathy, especially when it's coupled with the other tragic language included here. Mother Nature isn't just grieving. She's in such deep mourning that even her "children" can't get her to "smile."
The metaphor of sunlight as the "life-blood of Nature" further emphasizes the vital role of sunlight in sustaining the natural world. The comparison of Nature without sunlight to a widow deep in grief also strengthens this idea. Without sunlight, all the living things on earth die and fade away. When the world is lightless, J. feels horribly sad, as if Mother Nature "no longer cares" for the humans who live in the world.
