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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 War and Peace
Volume 1, Part 1: Chapters 1–4
Explanation and Analysis—Spinning Mill:
Anna Pavlovna, maid of honor to the mother of the Emperor, is a well-respected member of aristocratic society in St. Petersburg. In his depiction of one of her soirees, which demonstrates her capability as a high society host, Tolstoy use a metaphor and simile drawn from the language of industrialization and machinery:
As the owner of a spinning mill, having put his workers in their places, strolls about the establishment, watching out for an idle spindle or the odd one squealing much too loudly, and hastens to go and slow it down or start it up at the proper speed—so Anna Pavlovna strolled about her drawing room, going up to a circle that had fallen silent or was too talkative, and with one word or rearrangement set the conversation machine running evenly and properly again.
Related Themes:
Volume 1, Part 1: Chapters 12–13
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Leper:
Tolstoy uses a simile that compares Pierre to a "dead man" and a "leper" in a scene in which Pierre returns to the home of his dying father, Count Bezukhov. There, Pierre is met with a frosty reception from the three princesses who have attended to the Count in his final days:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The eldest, a neat, long-waisted, stern young lady, the one who had come out to Anna Mikhailovna, was reading; the younger ones, both red-cheeked and pretty, differing from each other only in that one had a mole above her lip, which was very becoming to her, were doing embroidery. Pierre was met like a dead man or a leper. The eldest princess interrupted her reading and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; the younger one, without the mole, assumed exactly the same expression; the youngest, with the mole, of a merry, laughter-prone character [...]
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Volume 1, Part 3: Chapters 14–19
Explanation and Analysis—The Buzzing of a Fly:
After the climactic Battle of Austerlitz, Prince Andrei lies wounded below the hill at Pratz when he hears the voice of Napoleon Bonaparte. In a famous passage, Tolstoy uses a simile that compares Napoleon's words to "the buzzing of a fly":
Unlock with LitCharts A+Prince Andrei understood that it had been said about him, and that it was Napoleon speaking [...] But he heard these words as if he was hearing the buzzing of a fly. He not only was not interested, he did not even notice, and at once forgot them. He had a burning in his head; he felt that he was losing blood, and he saw above him that distant, lofty, and eternal sky. He knew that it was Napoleon—his hero—but at that moment, Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant man [...]
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Volume 2, Part 1: Chapters 7–9
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Child:
Prince Andrei's first return from the war is marked by the death of his wife, Princess Lise, who dies giving birth to their son, Nikolai ("Nikolushka"), who survives. To describe the elder Prince Nikolai's reaction to all this, Tolstoy uses a simile that compares Prince Nikolai, in his distraught state, to a child as he seeks comfort from his own son, Prince Andrei.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Two hours after that, Prince Andrei went into his father’s study with quiet steps. The old man already knew everything. He was standing just by the door, and as soon as it opened, the old man silently embraced his son’s neck with his old, tough arms, as in a vise, and burst into sobs like a child.
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Volume 2, Part 5: Chapters 18–22
Explanation and Analysis—The Comet of 1812:
Though Pierre worries for Natasha after her impulsive attempt to elope with the bigamous Anatole, putting an embarrassing and potentially ruinous end to her engagement with Prince Andrei, he is nevertheless struck by the grateful look she gives him when he offers to help her in the home of Marya Dmitrievna. Outside, he continues to dwell pleasurably upon Natasha's gratitude. At this pivotal moment in the novel, Tolstoy employs allusion, simile, and imagery in his depiction of the Great Comet of 1812:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Almost in the middle of that sky [...] stood the huge, bright comet of the year 1812—surrounded, strewn with stars on all sides, but different from them in its closeness to the earth, its white light and long, raised tail [...] Pierre, his eyes wet with tears, gazed joyfully at this bright star, which, having flown with inexpressible speed through immeasurable space on its parabolic course, suddenly, like an arrow piercing the earth, seemed to have struck here its one chosen spot in the black sky and stopped, its tail raised energetically, its white light shining and playing among the countless other shimmering stars.
Volume 3, Part 2: Chapters 24–25
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Game of Chess:
When Prince Andrei and Pierre meet briefly before the French troops advance upon Moscow, Pierre uses a simile that compares war to "a game of chess":
Unlock with LitCharts A+“However,” he said, “they do say that war is like a game of chess.”
“Yes,” said Prince Andrei, “only with this small difference, that in chess you can think over each move as long as you like, you’re outside the conditions of time, and with this difference, too, that a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war one battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes weaker than a company. Nobody can know the relative strength of the troops."
Related Themes:
Volume 3, Part 2: Chapters 36–39
Explanation and Analysis—World of Phantoms:
In one of many sections of the novel where Tolstoy pauses the primary narratives in order to reflect upon the nature of history, he uses both simile and metaphor in a withering critique of French leader Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he characterizes as occupying an "artificial world of phantoms of some sort of greatness":
Unlock with LitCharts A+And even without his order they were doing what he wanted, and he gave the instruction only because he thought an order was expected of him. And again he was transferred to his former artificial world of phantoms of some sort of greatness, and again (as a horse walking about a slanting treadmill imagines it is doing something for itself), he began to obediently fulfill that cruel, sad, oppressive, and inhuman role which had been assigned to him.
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Volume 4, Part 1: Chapters 9–13
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Stone:
While held as a prisoner of war by the French army, Pierre meets a humble man named Platon Karataev. Tolstoy characterizes Karataev with a series of similes that emphasize his connection to nature:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He had only to lie down in order to fall asleep at once like a stone, and he had only to shake himself in order to set about doing something at once, without a second’s delay, the way children, on getting up, take their toys [...] He sang songs not as singers do who know they are being listened to, but as birds do, apparently because it was necessary for him to utter those sounds, as it is necessary to stretch one’s arms or legs; and those sounds were always high, tender, almost feminine, mournful [...]
Related Themes:
Epilogue, Part 1: Chapters 5–7
Explanation and Analysis—One Blow After Another:
In the Epilogue, Tolstoy uses a simile that describes the various misfortunes suffered by the Rostov family as affecting Count Rostov "like one blow after another":
Unlock with LitCharts A+Count Ilya Andreevich died that same year, and, as always happens, with his death the old family broke up. The events of the past year—the Moscow fire and the flight from it, the death of Prince Andrei and Natasha’s despair, the death of Petya, the countess’s grief—all this, like one blow after another, fell on the old count’s head. It seemed he did not understand and felt unable to understand the significance of all these events, and morally bowed his old head, as if expecting and asking for new blows that would finish him off.
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