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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—The Cadaver:
Reflecting upon her own ongoing fixation with the Rosenbergs, who were convicted of committing espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, Esther uses a simile that compares her obsession with their trial and execution to a past incident in which she saw a dead body:
I kept hearing about the Rosenbergs over the radio and at the office till I couldn’t get them out of my mind. It was like the first time I saw a cadaver. For weeks afterward, the cadaver’s head—or what there was left of it—floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and behind the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadaver’s head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.
Listening to news reports concerning the Rosenbergs, Esther finds that she “couldn’t get them out of [her] mind.” Using a simile, she describes this fixation as being “like the first time [she] saw a cadaver.” While dating Buddy Willard, a medical student, Esther examined various specimens at the medical college, including various infants with birth defects, and a human “cadaver.” “For weeks afterward,” she claims, she continued to see the mental image of the dead body while going about her daily chores and activities. She expands upon this simile with another simile, describing this unpleasant and morbid mental image as being “like some black, noseless balloon stinking with vinegar,” which trails behind her wherever she goes. These similes, then, emphasize the extent to which she fixates upon morbid topics, ultimately reflecting her depressive mental state.
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Numb Trolleybus:
Reflecting upon what she regards as the failure of her time in New York City, Esther uses a series of similes related to cars and automobiles:
Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car. Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus.
Here, Esther imagines how others would react to her life story, imagining that, for most people, she embodies the American dream of achieving success despite humble origins. Other people, she thinks, might assume that she is “steering New York like her own private car.” This simile implies that Esther has found great success and now finds herself comfortable and at home in the big city. However, Esther cynically dismisses this notion and suggests that she is, instead, being “bumped” from place to place “like a numb trolleybus.” This second simile suggests that Esther does not feel that she is in control of her life and is instead being dragged around with little sense of free will.
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Racehorse :
Esther uses a series of similes to explain her own feelings of inadequacy while living and working in New York City:
For the first time in my life [...] I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it. The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.
While on a date with Constantin, a simultaneous interpreter working at the U.N., Esther feels “dreadfully inadequate.” This feeling, she notes, is a new one for her. For much of her life, she has succeeded academically, winning prizes and scholarships and impressing her teachers. In New York, however, she feels that these accomplishments no longer matter. Esther feels “like a racehorse in a world without racetracks,” a simile that suggests that her talents have become obsolete. Further, she compares herself to “a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street,” another simile that invokes a sense of faded and irrelevant skill. These similes underscore Esther’s difficulty in adapting to the professional world, as well as her feeling that she is past her prime.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Squirrel :
When Esther first arrives in the mental health care facility operated by the kind female psychiatrist, Doctor Nolan, she uses a metaphor, presenting herself as a squirrel:
A maid in a green uniform was setting the tables for supper. There were white linen tablecloths and glasses and paper napkins. I stored the fact that there were real glasses in the corner of my mind the way a squirrel stores a nut. At the city hospital we had drunk out of paper cups and had no knives to cut our meat. The meat had always been so overcooked we could cut it with a fork.
At the other health care facility ran by Doctor Gordon, implements such as cutlery are banned so that patients cannot hurt themselves or others. At Doctor Nolan’s facility, Esther observes that there are “real glasses” at the dinner table, and she notes this fact “the way a squirrel stores a nut.” Here, she imagines herself storing away this fact for future use, suggesting that she is still looking for ways to harm or kill herself and underscoring the severity of her mental illness at this point in the novel. Ultimately, she learns that Doctor Gordon’s facility is run in a way that shows trust to its patience and allows them a higher degree of freedom.
Related Themes:
Chapter 18
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Martian:
At Doctor Nolan’s facility, Esther meets Joan, who previously dated Buddy but is implied in the novel to be a lesbian. Esther uses a series of similes that underscore her difficulty in understanding Joan despite their similar backgrounds and shared experiences of mental illness:
In spite of the creepy feeling, and in spite of my old, ingrained dislike, Joan fascinated me. It was like observing a Martian, or a particularly warty toad. Her thoughts were not my thoughts, nor her feelings my feelings, but we were close enough so that her thoughts and feelings seemed a wry, black image of my own. Sometimes I wondered if I had made Joan up. Other times I wondered if she would continue to pop in at every crisis of my life to remind me of what I had been [...]
Looking at Joan, Esther feels like she is “observing a Martian, or a particularly warty toad.” Though the two young women are very different, Esther comes to feel as though Joan’s thoughts represent a “wry, black image” of her own. In her paranoid and depressive state, Esther wonders if she has “made Joan up” or, otherwise, if Joan “would continue to pop in at every crisis of [her] life.” Ultimately, the two women develop a friendship that regrettably ends when Joan dies by suicide. Joan, for Esther, represents the possibility that she will not be healed and, ultimately, might lose the battle with her own depression.
