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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—Like Crows:
As Arthur collapses onto the stage during King Lear, Mandel uses a simile comparing the medics to crows to show that this moment is very bad news indeed:
The ambulance had arrived, a pair of medics approaching through the absurdly still-falling snow, and then they were upon the fallen actor like crows, a man and a woman in dark uniforms crowding Jeevan aside, the woman so young she could’ve passed as a teenager.
Crows are carrion birds, meaning that they tend to land on corpses to scavenge their bodies for meat. It’s not necessarily an image that one would associate with medical professionals arriving to save a life. Instead, the comparison to crows here suggests the approach of death, as though Arthur's doctors are scavengers descending on a dying man. Because of their dark uniforms, their quick arrival and their sudden movements create an image of creatures circling prey rather than professionals providing aid. Their presence feels intrusive and unpleasant, especially for Jeevan as they shove him to the side. The falling snow—a stage design element meant to evoke the moors Lear is wandering on for the audience of the play—contrasts with the medics’ urgency. Jeevan feels that their scramble to help Arthur is out of place with the “absurdly still-falling snow” that is coming down. The snow continues, unaffected by the crisis, as if the staged performance and the reality of Arthur’s death have somehow merged.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Broken Bird:
As Arthur collapses onto the stage in King Lear, Mandel uses foreshadowing and a simile to create uncertainty around what’s happening to him, blurring the line between performance and reality:
"Down from the waist they are Centaurs," he said, and not only was this the wrong line but the delivery was wheezy, his voice barely audible. He cradled his hand to his chest like a broken bird. The actor portraying Edgar was watching him closely. It was still possible at that moment that Arthur was acting, but in the first row of the orchestra section a man was rising from his seat.
Arthur’s misplaced line—a rarity for him—and wheezing, faulty delivery foreshadow immediately that something is wrong. However, the moment remains ambiguous for the audience and for the other actors because of the part he is playing. King Lear is a frail, deteriorating character who is skirting the line between sanity and madness at this point in Shakespeare’s story. Because of this, Arthur’s wobbling body and mumbled delivery aren’t necessarily a clear signal that something is wrong. “The actor portraying Edgar” is not immediately startled but is instead “watching him closely” to figure out whether Arthur is simply leaning into the part or experiencing a real medical emergency.
The simile “he cradled his hand to his chest like a broken bird” also points to Arthur’s fragility in his final moments. Likening his hand to a wounded bird suggests that Arthur’s clutching something to him that is delicate and beyond saving. It’s as if his hand is a microcosm of the world that is about to collapse. However, like the incorrect line about "centaurs," it’s unclear to the people watching Arthur if this is part of his portrayal of Lear's madness. This tension between theater and real life reinforces the passage’s nightmarish unpredictability. The audience of the play, like the actor onstage with Arthur, must wait to see what is real.
Related Themes:
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Neutron Bomb:
When describing the lost years between the flu outbreak and people re-settling into communities, the author uses similes to emphasize the scale and suddenness of the pandemic’s destruction:
There was the flu that exploded like a neutron bomb over the surface of the earth and the shock of the collapse that followed, the first unspeakable years when everyone was traveling, before everyone caught on that there was no place they could walk to where life continued as it had before and settled wherever they could, clustered close together for safety in truck stops and former restaurants and old motels.
A neutron bomb is a type of thermonuclear weapon. It’s specially calibrated to release a large burst of neutron radiation, which minimizes the force of both the explosive blast and long-term radioactive fallout. It does this because it is intended to kill living organisms through intense radiation exposure while leaving buildings and infrastructure largely intact.
Comparing the Georgia Flu to a “neutron bomb” is an especially fitting image for the virus,because it wiped out all of humanity but left the structures of their physical world largely unchanged. Describing the pandemic as “explo[ding] like a neutron bomb” also points to the idea that civilization collapsed almost instantly after the contagion began. Mandel’s description of “the first unspeakable years”—and the long-run-on sentence it appears in—further suggests that the time after the pandemic was awful beyond words and dragged on past all sense. The flu did not just cause death; it erased the world as people knew it. The way she describes people “traveling” before realizing “there was no place they could walk to where life continued as it had before” also reinforces the inescapability of the collapse. No safe haven remained, and so people resorted to nesting wherever they could find shelter and stability.
Related Themes:
Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Avenging Angel:
To the Prophet, mass death from pandemics is always proof of mankind’s moral failure. As he explains this, he uses personification and a simile to frame the Georgia Flu as an unstoppable force sent from god to punish the wicked:
The flus came every season, but these were weak, inefficient viruses that struck down only the very old, the very young, and the very sick. And then came a virus like an avenging angel, unsurvivable, a microbe that reduced the population of the fallen world [...].
The Prophet presents the war and its consequences, including the flu, as evidence of divine judgment for mankind’s cruelty and stupidity. In order to drive his point home, he describes the virus as “an avenging angel.” In his mind it is not just a meaningless illness, but a being with agency and purpose. By saying it is “like an avenging angel,” he suggests that the “unsurvivable” Georgia flu is not merely a disease but a divine agent of destruction. He supports this point by mentioning that some flus before it were “weak” and “inefficient,” as if they were mere warnings for the disaster to come. In contrast, the Georgia Flu is precise and absolute, striking without mercy to “reduce the population of the fallen world.”
Related Themes:
Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Party Diorama:
Miranda has to make a brief escape from the claustrophobic dinner party Arthur is throwing, running outside to take their dog out and hiding in the shadow of the house. The author uses a simile comparing the glowing scene she can see through the windows to a diorama to show her detachment from the scene.
Could she possibly go around to the front of the house, sneak in the front door and up to her studio unnoticed, then text Arthur to say that she has a headache? She steps away from the glass, toward the center of the lawn where the shadows are deepest. From here the dinner party looks like a diorama, white walls and golden light and glamorous people.
A diorama is a three-dimensional miniature scene that represents a real or imaginary environment. It’s often designed to show a moment frozen in time, with figures apparently in movement and realistically painted furniture or scenery. By comparing the dinner party to a diorama, Mandel shows how emotionally distant Miranda feels from the people inside. Like someone looking at a diorama, Miranda cannot participate in the event itself. She feels that the situation she is in is utterly artificial, the “golden light and glamorous people” a false world she isn’t really a part of.
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