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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
Part 1, Chapter 1: The Joy Luck Club
Explanation and Analysis—Elephant and Fish Hills:
Though Suyuan dies two months before Jing-Mei’s narrative begins, the novel’s use of imagery keeps her memories alive. In Part 1, Chapter 1, Jing-Mei recounts the pre-war China of Suyuan’s early adulthood, initiating her reader into a lush world that surpasses dreams:
When I saw the hills, I laughed and shuddered at the same time. The peaks looked like giant fried fish heads trying to jump out of a vat of oil. Behind each hill, I could see shadows of another fish, and then another and another. And then the clouds would move just a little and the hills would suddenly become monstrous elephants marching slowly toward me!
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 3: The Red Candle
Explanation and Analysis—Blind and Seeing:
Lindo Jong’s marriage ceremony weds a paradox with simile. Dressed in red, she approaches Tyan-yu in Part 1, Chapter 3 with resignation and new strength:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Someone took my hands and guided me down a path. I was like a blind person walking to my fate. But I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me.
Related Themes:
Part 4, Chapter 1: Magpies
Explanation and Analysis—Like Stairs:
The simile—which draws out the similarities between two objects—is a fitting literary scaffold in a story about mothers and daughters. In An-Mei Hsu’s final chapter, Part 4, Chapter 1, she turns to this device while watching her daughter work through the wreckage of her marriage:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.
Related Themes:
Part 4, Chapter 4: A Pair of Tickets
Explanation and Analysis—Mutant DNA:
Jing-Mei’s trip to Guangzhou brings Suyuan’s journey full circle—she returns to the land where her mother could not—but also awakens a deep cultural identity within. As she braces herself to enter China for the first time, she reflects upon the ways in which the trip has transformed her:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And when she said this, I saw myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all those things my mother did to embarrass me–haggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a toothpick in public, being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale pink are not good combinations for winter clothes.
Related Themes:
