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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
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Tears of Wax:
When Moché the Beadle, an immigrant Jewish man in Sighet, mysteriously returns to town a few months after an expulsion of foreign Jewish people by the Hungarian police, he describes a harrowing story. No one in Sighet believes Moché’s tale, and the story uses a simile to express his subsequent despair:
“Jews, listen to me! That’s all I ask of you. No money. No pity. Just listen to me!” he kept shouting in synagogue, between the prayer at dusk and the evening prayer. Even I did not believe him. I often sat with him, after services, and listened to his tales, trying to understand his grief. But all I felt was pity. “They think I’m mad,” he whispered, and tears, like drops of wax, flowed from his eyes.
Moché tells the town how the Gestapo forced the deported Jews off the train and into the forest to dig their own mass grave. The Jews were shot, one by one, even the babies, until the trench was full of their bodies. The people of Sighet don’t believe Moché or the absurd horror of his story. Moché’s tears fall “like drops of wax,” slowly extinguishing the candle of hope within him. Perhaps had the Jews of Sighet believed him, they could have run and saved themselves from the coming atrocities. For Moché, knowing of the Gestapo’s barbarism and ruthlessness, yet not having the power to save his fellow townspeople from them, is a fate worse than death.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—The Suffocation of Death:
When the Red Army is rumored to be nearby, Buna is evacuated, and the prisoners are forced to run endlessly in the snow. Amidst this torturous night, Eliezer considers the idea of death, using a simile to describe his fascination and personal relationship with it:
I soon forgot him. I began to think of myself again. My foot was aching, I shivered with every step. Just a few more meters and it will be over. I’ll fall. A small red flame … A shot … Death enveloped me, it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it. The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue nor cold, nothing. To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road …
Those who can’t keep up are either shot to death or trampled to death after collapsing. Eliezer witnesses a young Polish boy suffer a stomachache and consequently get trampled to death by the running feet of thousands of prisoners. This incident, along with the endlessness of the night, the uselessness of his emaciated body, makes Eliezer consider letting death finally take him. He describes how he feels already conquered by death, “suffocated” by its constancy, always surrounding him in the falling bodies of his fellow prisoners and the corpse-like condition of his own body. He compares death to glue being stuck to his body, for no matter how far he runs, he can never outrun it. It is because of this certainty that he will forever wear death like a coat of glue that Eliezer considers breaking rank. For a moment, he thinks about what it would be like “to no longer feel anything,” to let death succeed in suffocating him. In the end, Eliezer realizes cannot die and leave his father all alone.
Related Themes:
