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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
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Coat of Varnish:
When Gene returns to the Devon School at the novel’s beginning, the author uses a simile to describe its unchanged appearance after 15 years:
I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before. It seemed more sedate than I remembered it, more perpendicular and strait-laced, with narrower windows and shinier woodwork, as though a coat of varnish had been put over everything for better preservation. But, of course, fifteen years before there had been a war going on.
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Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Porpoise:
In this passage in Chapter 3, Knowles uses a simile to illustrate Leper Lepellier’s naive, unthinking participation during a game of "blitzball" at the Devon School. Gene tells the reader:
Unlock with LitCharts A+So I began running again. Leper Lepellier was loping along outside my perimeter, not noticing the game, tagging along without reason, like a porpoise escorting a passing ship.
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Explanation and Analysis—American Drab:
In Gene’s thoughts about his life and his choices, he often returns to the question of his own privilege as an American and what having an American perspective means. In Chapter 3, he uses a simile and a metaphor to describe how he sees the American perception of the world:
Unlock with LitCharts A+All foreign lands are inaccessible except to servicemen; they are vague, distant, and sealed off as though behind a curtain of plastic. The prevailing color of life in America is a dull, dark green called olive drab. That color is always respectable and always important. Most other colors risk being unpatriotic [...]
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Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Brain Explosions:
Because Gene worries so much that Finny is his social and moral superior, he’s astonished when he realizes the jealousy between them might go both ways. Knowles uses hyperbole and similes to convey Gene's shock and realization when, in Chapter 4, Finny reveals he’d be jealous if Gene became Head Boy:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In front of my eyes the trigonometry textbook blurred into a jumble. I couldn’t see. My brain exploded. He minded, despised the possibility that I might be the head of the school. There was a swift chain of explosions in my brain, one certainty after another blasted—up like a detonation went the idea of any best friend, up went affection and partnership and sticking by someone and relying on someone absolutely [...]
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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Ocean Squall:
In Chapter 6, Gene encounters a figure approaching him on one of the Devon School's paths and instantly feels afraid. In this passage, Knowles uses a simile and hyperbole to create an atmosphere of unease:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Someone was coming toward me along the bent, broken lane which led to the dormitory, a lane out of old London, ancient houses on either side leaning as though soon to tumble into it, cobblestones heaving underfoot like a bricked-over ocean squall—a figure of great height advanced down them toward me.
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Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Bomb:
After the carnival, in Chapter 9, Knowles uses an idiom and a simile to convey the tension and strain between Gene and Finny as their relationship flirts with disaster. Gene observes Finny’s very precarious emotional state:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He gave me a long, pondering look, his face closed and concentrating while behind it his mind plainly teetered between fury and hilarity; I think if I had batted an eye he would have hit me. The carnival’s breaking apart into a riot hung like a bomb between us.
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Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Thunderclap:
Gene is confused and horrified by the aftereffects of Finny’s second accident. To demonstrate this, Knowles uses two similes to capture Gene’s confusion and guilt and to show how Finny’s injury affected the emotional life of every Devon School student:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I couldn’t escape a confusing sense of having lived through all of this before—Phineas in the Infirmary, and myself responsible. I seemed to be less shocked by it now than I had the first time last August, when it had broken over our heads like a thunderclap in a flawless sky. There were hints of much worse things around us now like a faint odor in the air, evoked by words like 'plasma' and 'psycho' and 'sulfa,' strange words like that with endings like Latin nouns.
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Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Blessing:
Despite how ugly the atmosphere within it sometimes is, the exterior of the Devon School is sublimely beautiful. Here, in Chapter 13, Knowles deploys similes to describe the serene, idyllic atmosphere of the school one summer day:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Around them spread a beautiful New England day. Peace lay on Devon like a blessing, the summer’s peace, the reprieve, New Hampshire’s response to all the cogitation and deadness of winter. There could be no urgency in work during such summers; any parachutes rigged would be no more effective than napkins.
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