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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Think Like a Horse:
In Chapter 1, Lily helps her father train the horses, working with the half-broken ones, and he advises her by using both an idiom and a simile:
Everyone who spent time around horses, Dad liked to say, needed to learn to think like a horse. He was always repeating that phrase: “Think like a horse.” The key to that, he said, was understanding that horses were always afraid [...] They were all the time looking for a protector, and if you could convince a horse that you’d protect him, he would do anything for you.
The phrase "Think like a horse" compares the ranchers' way of thinking to the horses'. The difference between them, Lily's father argues, needs to be bridged so that they can effectively train the horses. The fact that this is a simile, not a metaphor (i.e., saying something along the lines of "Be a horse in your thinking"), allows Lily to understand that there will always be a distance between horses and people. Even though she grows close to the horses, she will never be truly like them, and she has to actively adapt to the horses' way of seeing the world.
This simile also becomes an idiom, as Lily's father makes it a motto and repeats it constantly. It impacts Lily's whole life and worldview, even after she finishes training horses and moves away to teach. She understands that she has to think like her subject—whether it be a horse or a schoolchild—in order to effectively teach them.
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