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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
Book 1
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 . . . .
It is crucial to note in this passage how figurative language—principally simile, along with a smattering of visual and tactile imagery conveyed by words like "scorched," "harsh," and "untilled"—combine to generate a perception of indigenous people as "savage" or "uncivilized." People who live in unfavorable climates described as "scorched" and "desolate" and are likened to beasts. These people seem less human by More's description than the "civilized" people one encounters further on. Though More does not specifically mention indigenous peoples, the supposed "savagery" of people who do not have infrastructure and social conventions similar to those of Europe are ultimately dehumanized in this passage.
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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."
The offspring in this comparison are the "prince's favourites," whom the advisors agree with out of self-interest rather than principle. More uses this simile, speaking through the voice of Raphael, to criticize the moral and intellectual integrity of his government's top officials. However, by using Raphael instead of the "character" More to speak this line, More can maintain plausible deniability. Throughout the novel, it is important that More establish a level of remove from his own political assertions; after all, it is dangerous to be a dissenter, much less criticize the intelligence and political positions of those closest to the king.
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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."
Raphael likens a king who keeps his people impoverished to a doctor that deliberately makes his patients sick. This figurative language is apt, for it highlights the irrationality of this kingly logic: no ruler who has the concerns of the citizenry forefront in his or her mind would purposefully deplete their resources. This simile also highlights the inordinate amount of power that kings have over the body politic, similar to the inordinate amount of power that doctors exert over the physical body. Patients place their faith in doctors—in their medical expertise and experience—and thus cede some level of bodily autonomy in the hopes that the doctor will be able to cure their illness and save them from death. Similarly, citizens of a country place their faith in a king, ceding some bodily autonomy and permitting that king the right of governance. A king who takes advantage of this power over life and death is a despot.
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Book 2: Of the Travelling of the Utopians
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."
This is apt for Utopian society, where there is no private property: everything is done for the good of the household, not to benefit one particular citizen or king. Utopian people regard one another as family members. The entire country, in this manner, is one big family.
While this sentiment is touching, it is clearly an ideal that assumes the best of human nature. Furthermore, there is little privacy when one cannot own private property. Just as family members frequently invade one another's space, maintaining utopian abundance and equality requires near constant state surveillance, though Raphael doesn't get into these complications, instead focusing on this somewhat straightforward comparison between Utopian society and a large, unified family.
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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."
Raphael personifies nature, using a simile to liken it to an "indulgent mother." By Raphael's (and More's) logic, nature is indulgent because "she" makes things like silver and gold—which corrupt humankind—difficult to access. This is to humanity's benefit. Nature then further indulges humans by making the things that are good for them—the fundamental, natural things like air and water, which people need to survive—easy to access. This figurative language serves to juxtapose Utopian and European society: the former cares very little for silver, gold, and jewels, except under such circumstances as their use benefits the entire citizenry; the latter is rife with wealthy barons and kings who hoard their riches from the poor. These riches often take the material form of gold, silver, or jewels. Utopians are thus able to eliminate detrimental class differences that plague European society simply by devaluing objects of wealth.
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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."
In other words, rather than using the gold for a purpose, rich men are simply the arms and legs of their wealth—they are controlled by it, rather than seizing control of the currency for their own ends. This figurative language emphasizes the stranglehold that gold and other precious materials have over the European elite. European kings are needlessly distracted from the important task of serving their people by the allure of gold, silver, and jewels. By removing and devaluing these items, Utopians ensure that gold remains a tool, and that their public servants remain public servants.
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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."
This figurative language may betray some misogynistic bias directed against the pregnant state—indeed, women's bodies frequently become the symbolic sites of sin or unnatural impulse in literature. A key example of this is Eve in the Biblical book of Genesis: her physical hunger, as well as her thirst for the knowledge of good and evil, drive her to eat the apple that brings about the moral downfall of humankind. Many Christian leaders throughout time have interpreted this tale to mean that women are naturally the more sinful sex, set loose in the world to seduce men into vice. Similarly, Raphael's simile equating pregnancy cravings to a false or misguided moral impulse is a kind of figurative language that condemns by association. In this simile, natural female bodily functions are treated as unnatural and even sinful.
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