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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Like Robots:
Chapter 4 details the first day of classes, and Kleinbaum uses a simile to describe the way the students answer questions in class:
Hands flew into the air, students stood up and sat down like robots, reeling off answers, staunchly taking harsh reprimands for mistakes.
The quotation is from Dr. Hager’s math class, and the simile compares the students to robots who operate mechanically and without independent thought. While this simile is used to describe the math class, it would have been equally apt for any other class (besides English). The pedagogical approach of the teachers at Welton is uniform, focusing on rote memorization and regurgitating facts (excluding Mr. Keating). The simile helps convey just how little independent thought or action is encouraged at Welton, the students behaving as if programmed to respond exactly as they do.
It is no coincidence that this simile is used in Math class, which is the last class Todd attends before English with Mr. Keating. The reader, who has attended every class with Todd in exhausting fashion, has a comprehensive understanding of what class is like at Welton even without the apt simile. Mr. Keating’s class, however, is entirely different from the other classes: Mr. Keating is lively and energetic, encouraging individuality and discouraging a one-size-fits-all approach to poetry and critical analysis. The simile, by emphasizing the mechanical style of other teachers, juxtaposes sharply with Mr. Keating’s antithetical pedagogy, which the reader is about to experience for the first time.
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