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Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Similes
Explanation and Analysis—Bailey’s Wife:
When introducing readers to Bailey’s wife at the beginning of the story, O’Connor uses a pair of similes, as seen in the following passage:
Bailey didn’t look up from his reading so [the grandmother] wheeled around then and faced the children’s mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green headkerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit’s ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar.
The similes here describe Bailey’s wife’s face as “as broad and innocent as a cabbage” and the two points of her headkerchief as being “like rabbit’s ears.” These similes, along with the description of her feeding her baby apricots out of a jar, combine to communicate that Bailey’s wife has an innocent, almost naïve quality to her. This proves to be true—while the rest of the family argues for most of the road trip that they go on together, she almost never gets involved, choosing instead to go along with the decisions that the rest of the group makes about where to stop and when.
It is notable that, despite behaving in a more “civilized” manner than the rest of the family, Bailey’s wife isn’t exactly a “better” person than anyone else. In fact, her passivity contributes to her death—had she tried to intervene on the decision to drive down an unmarked country road or fought back against the Misfit and his henchmen, maybe she would have survived. This is one of the many ways that O’Connor challenges notions of what it means to be a “good” or “bad” person in the story.
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Explanation and Analysis—Like an Old Turkey:
When describing the grandmother’s reaction to hearing the gunshots that kill her son Bailey and her grandson John Wesley, the narrator uses a simile, as seen in the following passage:
There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, “Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!” as if her heart would break.
The simile here—in which the grandmother is compared to “a parched old turkey hen”—is significant for several reasons. First, it implies just how helpless she feels. A turkey hen without water cannot acquire water for itself, but is at the whims of its human captor—all it can do is call out for assistance with no guarantee that assistance will come. This description also captures the anxiety and desperation in the grandmother’s voice as she calls out for her son who, she assumes correctly, has just been killed.
This moment is also significant in the grandmother’s character arc. While she has been arguing with her son almost non-stop since the beginning of the story, here she finally feels her love for him and expresses it by desperately calling out his name. O’Connor suggests here that the threat of violence has helped the grandmother to tap into compassion for the first time in a long time and to think about people other than herself.
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Explanation and Analysis—Bailey’s Shirt:
After the family gets into a car accident on their road trip while arguing, O’Connor describes how each character fared. Her description of Bailey includes a simile, as seen in the following passage:
Bailey’s teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt.
In noting that the father’s face is “as yellow as the shirt” he is wearing, O’Connor communicates that Bailey is nauseous or otherwise unwell after their car flipped over and fell into a ditch. Additionally, while she could have described his “yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it” earlier in the story (such as when she noted what Bailey’s mother and wife were wearing at the beginning of the trip), O'Connor notes it here, likely in order to juxtapose the overly bright and playful shirt with the disturbing and demoralizing moment in which the family finds themselves.
O’Connor uses a second simile in reference to Bailey and his shirt later in the story, just before the Misfit’s henchmen take him away to kill him, writing, “His eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.” Here again the shirt reveals something important about Bailey’s internal state—his parrot-like “blue and intense" eyes communicate just how afraid he is for his life (and rightly so).
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