In Chapter 7, Naomi uses a simile as she recalls the searing weather of Southern Alberta during her mother’s last visit:

The May morning of her last visit, the sky by 10:00 a.m. was already yawning open like a great oven door. It was a premature furnace day. In Southern Alberta, spring weather is unpredictable—a blizzard one moment and midsummer the next. The only thing that is constant is the wind.

The simile “the sky […] yawning open like a great oven door” personifies the sky as if it is opening to release a sudden, engulfing heat, transforming a natural phenomenon into a vivid domestic image. The follow-up phrase, “a premature furnace day,” extends this figurative comparison, giving the impression that the landscape itself has become an enclosed heat source, threatening and inescapable.

This simile and extended metaphor work in tandem to establish the setting of Southern Alberta as both harsh and volatile. The sudden, oppressive heat mirrors the region’s unpredictable seasonal extremes, where spring can pivot from blizzard to midsummer without warning. By invoking a familiar domestic image—the oven door—Kogawa makes the environment tangible and sensory, allowing the reader to feel the shock of exposure that Naomi experiences.

The figurative language also reinforces the novel’s emotional atmosphere in the post‑internment chapters. The prairie landscape is isolating and unforgiving, reflecting the family’s displacement and the quiet severity of their new life. The simile gives the sky a subtle personification, “yawning” as if both indifferent and ominous, which intensifies the tone of unease. Through this vivid imagery, Kogawa transforms weather into a mirror of inner and outer conditions—a world of sudden extremes where stability is fleeting, and where both climate and memory carry an undercurrent of threat.