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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—Shakespeare:
In the following passage from Chapter 1, Kathy introduces readers to Tommy, another Hailsham student known for his tantrums and his resistance to "creativity." It is curious, given these two defining characteristics, that Kathy chooses to describe Tommy's "rage" by comparing it to the theatrical arts:
I suppose Tommy wasn’t used to being disturbed during his rages, because his first response when I came up to him was to stare at me for a second, then carry on as before. It was like he was doing Shakespeare and I’d come up onto the stage in the middle of his performance. Even when I said: ‘Tommy, your nice shirt. You'll get it all messed up,’ there was no sign of him having heard me.
Kathy likens Tommy's "tantrum" to him "doing Shakespeare." Use of this simile demonstrates how central the concept of "creativity" is for Hailsham students. For Kathy and her peers, creativity and imagination are identity-defining factors tied directly to an individual's social (and fiscal) currency. This point of view is no coincidence, having been foisted upon the children by those running the Hailsham experiment. Many people view imagination and creativity as proof of humanity—hence its value to Hailsham's cloned students, even if they cannot comprehend the implications of creativity's importance.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Hall of Mirrors:
In Chapter 2, Kathy describes the donation center for the readers' benefit, dwelling on the eerie, haunted feelings the building instills in all who enter. She utilizes imagery and a simile for this purpose:
Everything — the walls, the floor — has been done in gleaming white tiles, which the centre keeps so clean when you first go in it’s almost like entering a hall of mirrors. Of course, you don’t exactly see yourself reflected back loads of times, but you almost think you do. When you lift an arm, or when someone sits up in bed, you can feel this pale, shadowy movement all around you in the tiles.
In this passage, Kathy compares the "center" Ruth currently resides in to a "hall of mirrors." This simile emphasizes the way Kathy sees her own future reflected back at her in the people she cares for. As a person raised to donate organs, this too will happen to her some day. Ghostly, haunting imagery at the tail end of the passage compliments this simile, giving the impression that Kathy and Ruth are surrounded by the ghosts of their fellow donors—ghosts they will one day themselves become.
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Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—A Cold Moment:
In Chapter 3, Kathy and her Hailsham peers devise a scheme to force Madame to acknowledge them. Her attitude towards the children is a mystery Kathy endeavors to solve; but the answers Kathy receives to her questions are entirely unsatisfactory. Madame recoils from Kathy and her classmates, regarding them with a mix of fear and distaste the young children do not understand. Kathy uses a simile to describe Madame's response:
[T]here are people out there, like Madame, who don’t hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you . . . . The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it’s a cold moment. It’s like walking past a mirror you’ve walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.
Kathy speaks about Madame and other non-cloned humans, many of whom view her and her peers as unsettling or nonhuman. Their gazes and their lack of regard for her feel, in that moment, like viewing something strange and troubling in a mirror. Kathy is rightfully unsettled whenever she is reminded of the fact that other people perceive her as different and "abnormal[]."
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Explanation and Analysis—Spiders:
In Chapter 3, Ruth's theory is proven true: as the Hailsham students rush at Madame to garner some kind of reaction from her, the older woman recoils in fear. Kathy utilizes a simile in the following passage to characterize this interaction between Madame and the Hailsham children:
Ruth had been right: Madame was afraid of us. But she was afraid of us in the same way someone might be afraid of spiders. We hadn’t been ready for that. It had never occurred to us to wonder how we would feel, being seen like that, being the spiders.
In the above excerpt, Kathy uses figurative language, comparing herself and her peers to spiders (as viewed from Madame's perspective). This simile reveals Madame and the guardians' views of the cloned children. While certain guardians consider the children fully human, others, like Madame, perceive Kathy and her peers as inhuman—akin to animals or breeding stock. These children are less than Madame, somehow; destined to live a life of futility only to be crushed underfoot like spiders. Madame neither wants to look at nor think about the Hailsham students, likely because she feels a great deal of guilt about the forced donation system and her own complicity in it.
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Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Pencil Case:
In the following passage from Chapter 5, Kathy describes a past conflict she had with Ruth over the Miss Geraldine kidnapping plot. This conflict represents the first significant time Kathy is "snubbed" by another girl in her social circle, at which point she is treated to petty, underhanded jabs and passive aggression. Kathy describes the effect of this conflict using simile:
This might sound a pretty innocuous sort of response, but actually it was like she’d suddenly got up and hit me, and for the next few moments I felt hot and chilly at the same time. I knew exactly what she’d meant by her answer and smile: she was claiming the pencil case was a gift from Miss Geraldine.
Kathy compares her realization about Miss Geraldine and Ruth's relationship to a physical blow. She is jealous and frustrated with Ruth, who intimates that she is Miss Geraldine's favorite by implying that she received a pencil case from the guardian. This is one of Kathy's first experiences with social exclusion as a young child, hence why it hits her like a punch or kick might. She describes this sensation as feeling "hot and chilly at the same time"—an abrupt shift in the world around her, drawing conflicting feelings to the surface.
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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Fantasy:
In the following passage from Chapter 6, Kathy reflects on her and her Hailsham peers' childhood fantasies about Norfolk. They believed that all lost things would eventually end up in the seaside town, destined to one day be found again. Kathy contemplates this fantasy, acknowledging her youthful imagination through simile:
This might all sound daft, but you have to remember that to us, at that stage in our lives, any place beyond Hailsham was like a fantasy land; we had only the haziest notions of the world outside and about what was and wasn’t possible there.
In the above simile, Kathy compares Norfolk (or, indeed, "any place beyond Hailsham") to a fantasy land. This passage speaks to the ways in which Hailsham students use fictive escapism to avoid the heavy truths they'll face in the future. Even the name "Hailsham" contains the word "sham" in it. The boarding school exists to further an illusion, humanizing the children for a brief period of time before they age into adulthood and are dehumanized through the donation process.
Norfolk, which Kathy discusses in the immediately preceding passage, is the principal "fantasy land" for Hailsham students, representing the nebulous but persistent possibility of an alternative future.
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Day and Night:
In the following excerpt from Chapter 7, Kathy meditates on her final years at Hailsham, which she perceives as a "more serious" time. She utilizes a simile to describe this period in her life:
But those last years feel different. They weren't unhappy exactly — I’ve got plenty of memories I treasure from them — but they were more serious, and in some ways darker. Maybe I’ve exaggerated it in my mind, but I’ve got an impression of things changing rapidly around then, like day moving into night.
In the above excerpt, Ishiguro compares the rapid changes happening in Kathy's life during her last years at Hailsham to the transition between day and night. This simile alludes to the fact that for Kathy, leaving Hailsham puts her one step closer to donation—the "twilight" of her life, before she dies from the organ extraction process. The image of "day moving into night" also characterizes the events of Kathy's life moving forward. As she matures, she must grapple with "darker" concepts and circumstances, forced gradually to face the harsh realities of life as a predestined donor and human clone. Kathy's youthful hope, or "light," eventually dims as she begins to understand the futility of her situation.
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Chapter 21
Explanation and Analysis—Test Question:
In the following excerpt from Chapter 21, Madame responds to Kathy and Tommy's inquiries about the Gallery. The former Hailsham affiliate responds to the couple's escapist fantasy with surprise and derision. Kathy describes this response using a simile:
"You believe this? That you're deeply in love? And therefore you've come to me for . . . this deferral? Why? Why did you come to me?" [. . .] She'd asked it almost like it was a test question she knew the answer to; as if, even, she'd taken other couples through an identical routine many times before.
In the above simile, Kathy compares Madame's statement to a test question, albeit a rhetorical one. She makes further observations about the tone of Madame's inquiry, noting the older woman's apparent familiarity with the desperate pleas of donor couples.
Madame's query of Kathy and Tommy is despairing: she knows she can do nothing to save them from being forced to donate their organs until they die. In a way, Madame asks "why" Kathy and Tommy came because she has no true answers to give them. Her outburst is an expression of frustration at her own helplessness—and the general hopelessness of the young donor couple's situation—rather than a question to which she anticipates a response.
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