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Similes
Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Jesus In There:
In Chapter 17, Minny finds Celia drinking out of an unmarked bottle. Celia sits alone in her bedroom, solemnly sipping, surrounded by empties. Minny is certain that Celia is an alcoholic and that her substance abuse is the cause of her unusual and erratic behavior. Celia seems to be lost in a drunken haze, as Minny describes using a simile, and the scene eventually comes to present a certain degree of situational irony:
Miss Celia picks a bottle up and looks at it like it’s Jesus in there and she can’t wait to get saved. She uncorks it, sips it, and sighs. Then she drinks three hard swallows and lays back on her fancy pillows.
Minny gives an evocative description of the addict's reverence for their drug of choice: Celia looks at the bottle "like it's Jesus in there and she can't wait to get saved." Celia never appears to be especially religious in the novel, so Minny interprets this as an unusual level of devotion for her boss. Minny is thoroughly annoyed by this discovery, given that she has had to care for multiple alcoholics in her working life. This annoyance makes the simile coolly ironic, as Minny disparages Celia's seemingly religious faith in alcohol.
Minny will later question why Celia still drinks whiskey while she is trying to have a baby. But, as is later revealed, these bottles do not have whiskey in them, but Chocktaw "catch tonic," a mixture of molasses and water. The mixture was supposed to make it more likely that Celia would conceive. Later, the reader understands that Celia looks at the bottle "like it’s Jesus in there" because she wants desperately to have a child and seemingly cannot. The novel's strict first-person perspective hides this truth until later, relying on Minny's perception of the moment.
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