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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—A Sleepwalker:
In this simile, Richard compares himself to a sleepwalker during his first few days at Hampden College:
And I was happy in those first days as really I’d never been before, roaming like a sleepwalker, stunned and drunk with beauty.
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Explanation and Analysis—Francis as a Crow:
Before Richard's first official class with Julian, he takes note of Francis Abernathy, whom he compares to a bird using a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As I was on my way there for my first class, I saw Francis Abernathy stalking across the meadow like a black bird, his coat flapping dark and crowlike in the wind.
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Explanation and Analysis—An Expendable Past:
Richard does not speak much about his past before Hampden, but the little he does share paints a picture of a dreary and insignificant life. With a simile, he compares his life in California to a plastic cup:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Plano. The word conjures up drive-ins, tract homes, waves of heat rising from the blacktop. My years there created for me an expendable past, disposable as a plastic cup. Which I suppose was a very great gift, in a way. On leaving home I was able to fabricate a new and far more satisfying history, full of striking, simplistic environmental influences; a colorful past, easily accessible to strangers.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Black Death:
When Richard attends a Friday night party at Hampden, he counts on the fact that the other Greek students will not be there. He describes their aversion to parties with a hyperbolic simile and allusion:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I knew none of my fellow Greek students would be there. Having been to every Friday night party since school began, I knew they avoided them like the Black Death.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Bloody Accident:
In Chapter 2, while the Greek students amble around a nearby lake, Camilla slices open her foot on a shard of glass. Richard uses a simile to describe Camilla's blood and is mesmerized by its movement in the water:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In the water, a dark plume of blood blossomed by her foot; as I blinked, a thin red tendril spiraled up and curled over her pale toes, undulating in the water like a thread of crimson smoke.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Bad Child:
When Bunny takes Richard out to lunch on his dime, he realizes he is unable to pay and must call Henry to take care of the bill. After Henry shows up to rescue the two, Richard uses a simile to emphasize Bunny's childish behavior:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Henry paid the check while Bunny hung behind him like a bad child. The ride home was excruciating. Bunny, in the back seat, kept up a sally of brilliant but doomed attempts at conversation, which one by one flared and sank, while Henry kept his eyes on the road and I sat in the front beside him, fidgeting with the built-in ashtray.
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Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—The Library as a Tomb:
Following Judy Poovey's advice, Richard goes looking for Bunny in the library, which he compares to the inside of a tomb with a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The library was like a tomb, illumined from within by a chill fluorescent light that, by contrast, made the afternoon seem colder and grayer than it was. The windows of the reading room were bright and blank; bookshelves, empty carrels, not a soul.
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