Utopia Literary Devices

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

Explanation and Analysis—The King's Officials:

In the following quote from Book One, Raphael compares the behavior of the king's advisors to that of crows and monkeys humoring the whims and needs of their offspring:

"You'll find no one among the councillors of kings who isn't either too wise to need advice from others, or at least thinks himself too wise to welcome it. Apart, that is, from the fatuous sayings of the prince's favourites, which they applaud and flatter in order to curry favour for themselves. It's only natural, after all, for people to have a soft spot for their own conceits, just as the crow and the monkey dote on their young."

Explanation and Analysis—The King as a Doctor:

In his efforts to criticize despotic kings in Book One, Raphael uses an appropriate simile equating kings with doctors:

"Just as it's a pretty useless doctor who only knows how to cure a disease by inflicting another one, so he who knows no other way to improve the lives of citizens except by taking away the amenities of life is admitting that he doesn't know how to govern free men."

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Explanation and Analysis—Description of New World:

In this passage towards the beginning of Book One, More relates Raphael's rich description of the landscape of the "New World":

It is clear that under the equator and on both sides of the line, as far as the sun's orbit extends, there lie vast deserts scorched with perpetual heat: the entire region is harsh and desolate, untilled and savage, inhabited by wild beasts and serpents, as well as by men who are as wild as the beasts themselves and no less dangerous. But as you travel further the landscape gradually relents: the climate is less extreme . . . . In time you reach peoples and cities and settlements . . . .

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Explanation and Analysis—Mother Nature and Wealth:

Discussing the Utopians' use of gold and silver in Book Two, Raphael uses a combination of personification and simile:

"Nature has allotted no function to gold or silver that we can't do without; only human folly has rated them as precious because they are rare. Nature, for her part, like an indulgent mother, has placed all wholesome things, like air, water and earth itself, within our reach; those that are vain and unprofitable she hides away in inaccessible places."

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Explanation and Analysis—Utopia as One Household:

Raphael, describing the administrative practice of Utopian food distribution in the following passage from Book Two, uses a simile to compare the entire island of Utopia to a single household:

"In the senate in Amaurot . . . [the Utopians] first establish where there's been a plentiful harvest and where there's been a poor one, and speedily remedy one district's shortfall with another's surplus. This transfer is entirely gratuitous: those who give get nothing in return from the recipients. But those who have donated to one city from their resources, seeking nothing in return, then receive their particular requirements from another city to which they give nothing. In this way the whole island is like a single household."

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Explanation and Analysis—Beholden to Wealth:

Continuing his account of Utopian attitudes towards gold in Book Two, Raphael uses a simile to compare rich men (i.e. Europeans who have a lot of gold and value it highly) to appendages attached to a "body" constituted by "cash":

"Again, [the Utopians] are astonished that gold, which of itself is perfectly useless, is everywhere so highly prized that man, who imposes value on it for his own purposes, is himself valued at a lower rate . . . Yet if some twist of fortune or some trick of the law . . . should transfer the gold to the lowest creature in [a rich man's] household, in next to no time he'd be the servant of his servant, just like an appendage to the cash."

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Explanation and Analysis—Pregnant Women:

In Book Two, Raphael uses a simile to compare the disordered tastes of those people caught up in "counterfeit pleasures" to the cravings of a pregnant woman:

"The fact that [counterfeit pleasures] tickle the senses of the general run of humanity . . . in no way alters Utopian opinion, for the enjoyment doesn't result from the nature of the act in itself but rather from those false perceptions by which people take bitter things for sweet, much as pregnant women find pitch and tallow sweeter than honey because of their disordered palate."

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Utopia: Similes 7 key examples

Definition of Simile