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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Belly Up:
When the twins fall asleep in the History House, traumatized by Sophie Mol's death, they awake to the sound of Velutha being brutally beaten by the police. With a simile, the twins experience another traumatizing event:
Esthappen and Rahel woke to the shout of sleep surprised by shattered kneecaps.
Screams died in them and floated belly up, like dead fish. Cowering on the floor, rocking between dread and disbelief, they realized that the man being beaten was Velutha. Where had he come from? What had he done? Why had the policemen brought him here?
The novel likens the twins’ screams as fish dying and floating to the surface of the water. For such a shocking and violent situation, this simile is rather slow, with floating up rather than falling down. Estha and Rahel are watching the scene of Velutha’s beating in slow motion, unable to process what they are seeing. The amount of violence and brutality is something the twins have never encountered. To wake to the sound of "shattered kneecaps" is traumatizing.
The twins' inability to process the scene is represented through the death of their screams:not even a scream is a powerful enough response to this violence. The simile can also serve as a comparison of the twins's souls to dead fish. Not only do their screams die in them, but also their innocence. Their shock is further proven by their lists of questions asked in an attempt to comprehend the situation.
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