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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.
The simile here compares the school’s appearance to being "varnished," which suggests that it hasn’t changed much since Gene left. The passing of time has polished and preserved the school’s appearance and atmosphere rather than transforming or changing it. Gene remembers how the school insulated him and his friends from the realities of the outside world. It feels like that artificial, temporary stability has remained to an almost supernatural degree. Devon has been shielded from the natural wear and tear that time brings. It also seems to be more "sedate" than Gene remembers, which contributes to this sense of stiffness and polish. The author uses the word "perpendicular" in an unusual way here. As it's combined with "strait-laced," it invokes the idea that the Devon school is still standing artificially stiff and straight against the ravages of time. Gene's memory has softened its edges, but when he returns he feels it's even stiffer and "narrower" than he had previously recalled.
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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:
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.
The simile here compares Leper to "a porpoise escorting a passing ship." When ships are moving quickly through the sea, porpoises often swim behind and alongside them as if “escorting” them to their location. In this comparison, Knowles implies that an “escorting” porpoise thinks it plays an important role alongside the “passing ship.” However, in reality it’s merely following along in the ship's wake, and its actions have no effect on the ship's progress. Leper is a quiet and peaceful boy who often seems detached from his friends and schoolmates. By comparing him to a porpoise, Knowles is saying that Leper's behavior as he runs alongside the perimeter of the football game is unintentionally comical to Gene. In this scene, as in much of A Separate Peace, Leper is physically present but not actively participating in the action around him in any meaningful way.
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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:
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 [...]
Gene’s simile explains that Americans view the rest of the world in a detached and isolated way, "as though behind a curtain of plastic." Other countries seem “vague and distant” compared to their own lives. The effect of their sheltered New England boarding school life makes Gene feel distant from what’s happening abroad. Gene's simile suggests that American perspectives on the rest of the world can cloud or distort people’s understanding.
The metaphor he uses here describes olive drab as the "prevailing color of life" in America. Gene is referring to the color of American military uniforms. The metaphor suggests that the “color of life” in America is so shaped by military values that it becomes uniform-colored. Gene thinks his education is reinforcing a narrow, conformist view that prioritizes American values and experiences over understanding other perspectives.
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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:
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 [...]
Gene is using hyperbole when he says that his “brain exploded" here—his brain is fine, he’s just so astonished that Finny could be jealous of him that he doesn’t know what to do. The realizations of Finny’s disloyalty that come after this also behave like "a swift chain of explosions in [his] brain." Gene is absolutely overwhelmed by the realization that Finny is jealous of him. He’s shocked and disoriented but also intensely disappointed because it disrupts his confidence in Finny’s love for him.
The simile in this passage also refers to explosions. Finny admitting he would be jealous if Gene became Head Boy feels very destructive to Gene. He feels that his certainties of “affection and partnership” have been “detonated” and exploded. His previous assumptions about Finny’s friendship and loyalty are violently shattered.
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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:
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.
This highly figurative and exaggerated description of the setting points to Gene’s fear and sense of vulnerability as the figure approaches. His simile comparing the cobblestones to "a bricked-over ocean squall" links the physical environment to the unease Gene is trying to conceal within himself. Like an ocean trapped under cobblestones, he’s barely containing the disturbances below his surface. The lane seems almost supernaturally narrow and the buildings around it threaten to topple down onto him, heightening Gene’s feeling that his environment is suddenly a threat. The hyperbole Knowles employs to describe the "leaning" houses and the narrow, broken lane also contributes to the reader’s understanding of how unsafe Gene feels. He’s so scared that the solid space around him seems about to collapse.
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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:
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.
When someone uses the idiom "batted an eye," they are usually referring to the idea of making a very small movement, gesture, or sound that might disturb a situation. In this instance, Gene is doing this, but he’s also literally referring to blinking. He feels that even the smallest movement might provoke Finny into violent action. Gene’s constant awareness of Finny’s emotional state reflects how well he knows his friend. He searches every subtle cue he can spot for signs of potential aggression.
The simile "hung like a bomb" likens the tension between the boys to the dread of an unexploded bomb falling. The unresolved emotions between Gene and Finny—paired with the chaos and noise of the carnival around them—make Gene feel that Finny is seconds away from losing his temper and “detonating” the bomb.
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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:
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.
The situation after Finny’s fall down the stairs is eerily like the circumstances of his first fall. The simile "like a thunderclap in a flawless sky" conveys the suddenness and shock of the guilt Gene felt after Finny’s first accident. A thunderclap in an otherwise perfect summer sky suggests something jarring and unexpected. Gene is less disturbed by this “thunderclap” the second time than he was the first, but the odd feeling of deja vu won’t go away.
The second simile, "like a faint odor in the air," describes the lingering sense of unease that Gene associates with the war’s presence outside the Devon School. Although they can’t see it, the presence of the war is beginning to hover like a scent around the boys.
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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:
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.
The first simile, "Peace lay on Devon like a blessing," reinforces the profound calm that surrounds the school on these lazy summer days. This comparison likens the peace Gene feels to a blessing that has been gently placed upon the school. This simile links the beauty, calm, and warmth of the day with the overall aura of the Devon School itself. The feeling Gene has about the school that summer day directly contrasts with how he feels there in winter. Summer at the Devon school is dreamy and perfect, the opposite of the loneliness and "deadness of winter" and the associated "cogitation”—feeling stuck in his own thoughts—the cold brings Gene.
The second simile, "no more effective than napkins," suggests that the summer is so relaxing and peaceful that no work can be done, or at least not successful work. It would be completely futile to try and make parachutes, for example, because the parachutes would be as useless as “napkins” if anyone tried. The idyllic peace of the summer renders typical activities related to work or war pointless.
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