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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Fallen Kite:
In Chapter 1, Charlie uses a series of similes to describe what it is like to watch Laura's body fall into the river. One of the similes later turns into an important extended metaphor:
And it is sudden when she falls. Fast. Like a white kite spearing the ground, its tail lolling lazily behind. She folds and crumples. Like a doll. Like a bag of wet bones. With a soft, horrible thud when she meets the earth. A sound that reminds me that she’s just loose meat. And I guess I shouldn’t be, but I am shocked by her lifelessness.
Laura's fall reminds Charlie of the moment when a kite falls out of the sky and hits the ground, or the moment when a child drops a doll on the ground. While she is in the air, she is almost beautiful. She gives the same illusion of life that a child projects onto a kite in the air or a doll in their arms. The second she hits the ground, she turns lifeless. The thudding sound "reminds [Charlie] that she's just loose meat," a realization that is all the more distressing and "shocking" because of the temporary illusion of life during her fall. Charlie isn't sure yet how she died, but he is already thinking about culpability—his own and others'. Society has dropped Laura with the same lack of regard a child displays when they drop a doll they are bored of playing with.
It is the kite simile that sticks in Charlie's mind after this scene. He returns to it at the end of Chapter 7, when some neighborhood children finally manage to get a kite into the air:
It’s easy to imagine it…as though they’ve tied a long string to the foot of a hovering hawk, keeping it on a thin leash to feel what it is to fly. And you want to let it higher, you want to spool out your line and hold it, just for the thrill, to see how far it goes. But once it’s out of view, you want it back again, don’t you? …And you want to tie it to something permanent, put it in a cage at night.…But of course you can’t do that. Holding something doesn’t make it yours.
The kite is inanimate, but Charlie compares it to a live bird on which the children have a tenuous hold. The kite-bird becomes a metaphor for relationships. Laura died because her father wanted too much control over her and her body. He created a living being and then, by refusing to let her have her autonomy, he turned her into the "bag of bones" Charlie and Jasper pushed off the dam. Charlie realizes that he does not want to do the same to anyone else. He has not done anything nearly as abusive as Pete Wishart has, but he has spent most of the novel trying to make sure Eliza won't hate him for his involvement in Laura's death. He now understands that in so doing, he has kept Eliza "caged." As much as he wishes he could ensure that she will not betray or abandon him and Jasper, he understands that he cannot have a real relationship with her as long as it is not her clear-eyed choice. He chooses to let her fly free as a bird instead of pulling her to the ground like an inanimate kite.
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