Previous
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 3
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Little Ape:
In Chapter 3, Hazel pays a second visit to Leora Watts. Feeling uneasy and vulnerable in her presence, he walks around the room looking at things while she watches him. O'Connor uses a simile and personfication to evoke his state of mind:
She rested her chin on her hand and watched him. He began to move around the room, examining this and that. His throat got dryer and his heart began to grip him like a little ape clutching the bars of its cage.
In the third sentence of the quoted passage, O'Connor personifies Hazel's heart by writing that it's gripping him. In this description, Hazel's relationship to his heart is flipped: while his heart is active, he is passively being acted upon. Rather than his heart being a part of his body, he becomes a mere object being held by his heart. This indicates that Hazel is at the mercy of his heart and emotions, and by extension that he's at the mercy of Leora Watts and his Christian faith.
At the end of the third sentence, O'Connor elaborates on the personification by way of a simile. Not only does Hazel feel as though he's being gripped by his heart, but he feels as though his heart is clutching him in the way a monkey would clutch the bars of its cage. In addition to making the description more visceral and desperate, the simile also contributes a sense of entrapment. Cages and coffins appear repeatedly throughout the story. Both of these symbols represent the claustrophobia and imprisonment that Hazel feels in relation to religion and faith. When he visits Leora Watts, he's trying to prove to himself and the world that he doesn't believe in sin or Jesus, but even as he pursues blasphemy, he still can't shake the religious belief at the core of his being. He wants to show that he's an animal that acts on instinct rather than a human under the heel of God's scrutiny, but he only gets as far as acting as a caged animal.
It's worth noting that, in the simile, Hazel would technically be the bars of the cage rather than the monkey. Regardless, the image of the cage and monkey emphasizes his unease and powerlessness. It also foreshadows Enoch's interactions with Gonga the Gorilla later in the book.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Trees and Cloud:
In Chapters 5 and 7, O'Connor uses simile and personification to describe the natural surroundings. Bringing a liveliness and poetic quality to each of the chapters, these descriptions can be read as a lighthearted counterbalance to the otherwise tense dialogue and atmosphere. On the other hand, the personification can also be read as an expression of the characters' paranoia. Neither Hazel nor Enoch seem to trust or even like other people very much, so finding human-like qualities in trees and clouds could indicate that they see even elements of nature as adversaries.
In Chapter 5, as Enoch takes Hazel around the city park, the narrator describes them walking down a hill. O'Connor uses a simile to compare the trees along the hill to people wearing white ankle-socks:
It was a steep hill, full of trees painted white from the ground up four feet. They looked as if they had on ankle-socks.
This figurative description has a sweet, lighthearted quality in comparison to the intense emotions that Enoch is experiencing and the strained atmosphere between him and Hazel. It's possible to read this description as O'Connor's attempt to poke fun at her eccentric characters, as the striking difference in atmosphere between the silly trees and the manic men puncture their self-seriousness. On the other hand, it's possible to read the trees as part and parcel with the strained mood, as the human-like trees surround the men in a moment of rising tension.
After they come back out from the museum, the narrator describes Enoch falling down and landing against "one of the white-socked trees." Again, the image of a tree wearing socks can be read as both comical and disturbing.
Chapter 7 offers another example of O'Connor using the natural elements of the setting to either lighten the mood or add to the characters' paranoia. Over the course of the chapter, the narrator makes multiple references to a human-like cloud moving around above Hazel and Sabbath. The narrator initially makes note of the cloud in the second sentence of the chapter:
The sky was just a little lighter blue than his suit, clear and even, with only one cloud in it, a large blinding white one with curls and a beard.
As with the trees, the cloud on one level zooms out from the characters' bizarre woes and lightens the mood. On another level, however, it's possible to imagine that Hazel is bothered by the cloud's human qualities. In fact, the white curls and beard are reminiscent of how angels and the Christian God are often depicted in art. The cloud's religious characterization is bolstered by the fact that the cloud is up in the sky and that there's only one of them. It also seems significant that the narrator describes the white cloud as "blinding." Hazel is fixated on sight and blindness—and he is figuratively blinded by his unwillingness to acknowledge his faith.
Over the course of the chapter, the cloud almost seems to operate as a character in the background, and the narrator mentions the "blinding white cloud" two more times. It moves around as Hazel and Sabbath interact. And just as the seventh chapter begins with the cloud, it also ends with it. By the ending, however, the cloud has "turned into a bird with long thin wings" and is "disappearing in the opposite direction."
Whether one reads them as light or dark, the descriptions of the trees and clouds are compelling. They show that, alongside her gift for creating sinister characters and unsettling situations, O'Connor also wrote poetically.
Related Themes:
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Trees and Cloud:
In Chapters 5 and 7, O'Connor uses simile and personification to describe the natural surroundings. Bringing a liveliness and poetic quality to each of the chapters, these descriptions can be read as a lighthearted counterbalance to the otherwise tense dialogue and atmosphere. On the other hand, the personification can also be read as an expression of the characters' paranoia. Neither Hazel nor Enoch seem to trust or even like other people very much, so finding human-like qualities in trees and clouds could indicate that they see even elements of nature as adversaries.
In Chapter 5, as Enoch takes Hazel around the city park, the narrator describes them walking down a hill. O'Connor uses a simile to compare the trees along the hill to people wearing white ankle-socks:
It was a steep hill, full of trees painted white from the ground up four feet. They looked as if they had on ankle-socks.
This figurative description has a sweet, lighthearted quality in comparison to the intense emotions that Enoch is experiencing and the strained atmosphere between him and Hazel. It's possible to read this description as O'Connor's attempt to poke fun at her eccentric characters, as the striking difference in atmosphere between the silly trees and the manic men puncture their self-seriousness. On the other hand, it's possible to read the trees as part and parcel with the strained mood, as the human-like trees surround the men in a moment of rising tension.
After they come back out from the museum, the narrator describes Enoch falling down and landing against "one of the white-socked trees." Again, the image of a tree wearing socks can be read as both comical and disturbing.
Chapter 7 offers another example of O'Connor using the natural elements of the setting to either lighten the mood or add to the characters' paranoia. Over the course of the chapter, the narrator makes multiple references to a human-like cloud moving around above Hazel and Sabbath. The narrator initially makes note of the cloud in the second sentence of the chapter:
The sky was just a little lighter blue than his suit, clear and even, with only one cloud in it, a large blinding white one with curls and a beard.
As with the trees, the cloud on one level zooms out from the characters' bizarre woes and lightens the mood. On another level, however, it's possible to imagine that Hazel is bothered by the cloud's human qualities. In fact, the white curls and beard are reminiscent of how angels and the Christian God are often depicted in art. The cloud's religious characterization is bolstered by the fact that the cloud is up in the sky and that there's only one of them. It also seems significant that the narrator describes the white cloud as "blinding." Hazel is fixated on sight and blindness—and he is figuratively blinded by his unwillingness to acknowledge his faith.
Over the course of the chapter, the cloud almost seems to operate as a character in the background, and the narrator mentions the "blinding white cloud" two more times. It moves around as Hazel and Sabbath interact. And just as the seventh chapter begins with the cloud, it also ends with it. By the ending, however, the cloud has "turned into a bird with long thin wings" and is "disappearing in the opposite direction."
Whether one reads them as light or dark, the descriptions of the trees and clouds are compelling. They show that, alongside her gift for creating sinister characters and unsettling situations, O'Connor also wrote poetically.
Related Themes:
Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Switchbox vs Tunnel:
The narration of Chapter 14 is focalized through the perspective of the landlady, Mrs. Flood. Throughout the chapter, she studies Hazel, trying to figure out how he operates and how he thinks. About halfway through the chapter, O'Connor uses a similes to contrast Mrs. Flood's way of thinking from that of Hazel:
She thought of her own head as a switchbox where she controlled from; but with him, she could only imagine the outside in, the whole black world in his head and his head bigger than the world, his head big enough to include the sky and planets and whatever was or had been or would be.
Mrs. Flood pictures her head as a switchbox, which a metal box that distributes power to various circuits in an electrical appliance. By comparing her head to a switchbox, she emphasizes that she thinks methodically and rationally. Her thoughts are coherent and easy to organize into individual categories that make up a greater whole. This is very different from how she envisions his head: the whole world, including outer space and the past and the future—all covered in darkness. Whereas she feels like the world is much bigger than what goes on in her head, she imagines that Hazel's head is bigger than the world beyond it. She believes that this is why he has retreated from the world.
Just after this, the narrator formulates another simile on Mrs. Flood's behalf, to describe Hazel's head:
She imagined it was like you were walking in a tunnel and all you could see was a pin point of light. She had to imagine the pin point of light; she couldn’t think of it at all without that.
In addition to capturing the difference between the two characters, the switchbox simile and the tunnel simile give insight into Mrs. Flood's fixation on Hazel. She desperately wants to understand him, all while realizing that she never will.
Related Themes:
