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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
Zero (August 7, 1944): Bombers
Explanation and Analysis—Unholy Tooth:
In Section Zero, Doerr uses simile to describe an American bombing campaign against German forces in Saint-Malo:
To the bombardiers, the walled city on its granite headland, drawing ever closer, looks like an unholy tooth, something black and dangerous, a final abscess to be lanced away.
Doerr compares this last German outpost to an "unholy tooth," a "final abscess to be lanced away" by the Americans, revealing their military's destructive, wartime mindset. This simile is not unmerited in its destructive sentiment, however extreme: it is true that Nazi ideology is dangerous and fascist, and that those supporting the Nazi cause had to be stopped for the war to end. The American bombardiers view all Germans as Nazis: a great, disgusting mass that must be rooted out and eliminated with no survivors.
While such a response to Nazism is entirely rational and reasonable, it is important to note that the American bombardiers' attitude over-generalizes Saint-Malo's residents, placing them all under the umbrella of "abscess." Many French people, like Marie-Laure, still reside in Saint-Malo despite the German occupation; Werner, too, though he fights for the Germans, is more a victim than an enabler of the Nazi Party and its incessant warmongering. Within the "abscess" lies a moral ambiguity that the American bombardiers have ceased to observe.
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Zero (August 7, 1944): The Boy
Explanation and Analysis—Her Majesty:
In Section Zero, Doerr introduces readers to Werner Pfennig, a young soldier in the German military forced to fight for the Nazi regime. Readers meet Werner in media res, in the midst of battle and cannon fire. Doerr describes one particular cannon from the perspective of Werner's fellow soldiers, using both simile and metaphor to accurately portray their attitude towards the weapon:
Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon, and for the past week these men have tended to it the way worker bees might tend to a queen. They’ve fed her oils, repainted her barrels, lubricated her wheels; they’ve arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings. The royal acht acht, a deathly monarch meant to protect them all.
In this excerpt, Doerr uses both simile and metaphor to compare the Austrian soldiers' cannon to a queen bee, dubbed their "deathly monarch." They worship her and service her needs as one might a queen, because she is their chief source of protection and assurance. This metaphor also calls to mind the idea that some young men "worship" at the altar of war, viewing it as a noble and glorious venture. Notably, though the "Austrians" seem to worship at war's altar, Werner, conspicuously excluded from her list of acolytes, does not.
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One (1934): Zollverein
Explanation and Analysis—Zollverein:
In Section One, Doerr introduces readers to Zollverein, a German industrial town that is home to Werner and Jutta Pfennig. The life these two children lead would appear grim to anyone: orphaned, destined to work in the coal mines, they are destined to die like their father did, crushed under the wheel of the German industrial machine. Zollverein itself is an unappealing, even hostile environment, as Doerr communicates through simile:
Smokestacks fume and locomotives trundle back and forth on elevated conduits and leafless trees stand atop slag heaps like skeleton hands shoved up from the underworld.
Zollverein is not a nurturing place for a child, much less a parentless child. In the above passage, Doerr uses simile to illustrate this, comparing the "leafless trees" in and around the coal mines to "skeleton hands" emerging from the underworld. This imagery also marks the mines as a site of death, where many a worker has perished and received no regard or sympathy from industry titans and politicians.
The hostility of Zollverein makes Werner's radios and the imagination they spark all the more crucial to his survival. In such an uninspiring place, Werner must work to "see" outside of his circumstances, beyond the future laid out for him.
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One (1934): The Professor
Explanation and Analysis—Possibility:
In Section One, Werner begins listening to the Professor's radio programs, which excite his imagination. Prompted to picture the process of coal being formed from organic matter over thousands of years, Werner is inspired to imagine other things, beautiful things he has never experienced or seen in real life. Doerr utilizes simile to illustrate this:
Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever,
and then a piano comes on, playing a lonely song that sounds to Werner like a golden boat traveling a dark river, a progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollverein: the houses turned to mist, the mines filled in, the smokestacks fallen, an ancient sea spilling through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility.
Werner imagines a song heard over the radio as a "golden boat traveling a dark river"—something he has likely never seen in real life but can experience through the power of his mind. The radio opens up other worlds for Werner, expanding his horizons and allowing him to see beyond Zollverein. Daniel LeBlanc's models unlock Marie-Laure's imagination and empower her to "see"; similarly, the Professor's diatribes unlock Werner's imagination, empowering him to "see" outside of the physical limitations of his location.
Related Themes:
One (1934): Bigger Faster Brighter
Explanation and Analysis—Voice of the Reich:
In the following excerpt from Section One, the narrator meditates on the use of radio in Germany. It is a uniting force, albeit with sinister connotations, that Doerr chooses to personify:
Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth. Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the
staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its
branches as if toward the lips of God. And when God stops whispering, they become desperate for
someone who can put things right.
The radio and the Reich both have a voice, regarded by German "subjects" as akin to the voice of God. This instance of figurative language portrays the reality of propaganda dissemination under fascist rule. A "million ears" form connections to one "single mouth," and that single mouth speaks only one "truth"—that which is most convenient for and best services the purposes of Nazi leadership. Nazi radio may be akin to a god, or a prophet, in the eyes of the German people, but if the Reich is a deity, it is indeed a false one. This personified voice grows like a "imperturbable tree," branches stretching out further and further, binding Germans together but also trapping them in a web of disinformation.
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