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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
Part 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Checkers:
In Chapter 2, Sethe compares how enslaved communities and families are often broken up and moved around to the game of checkers.
It made sense for a lot of reasons because in all of Baby’s life, as well as Sethe’s own, men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized. So Baby’s eight children had six fathers. What she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children.
By reducing people to game pieces, Sethe highlights the way Black communities, families, and people are dehumanized and deprived of agency. As with Baby Suggs, this dehumanization takes a toll on relationships between Black people, such that sometimes, people might accept the instability of their relationships as a matter of course and learn not to invest too deeply in them. Furthermore, the comparison reflects the detached nature of white enslavers in the face of Black tragedy. Black people only exist as pawns to help them "win," or in the case of slavery, increase their profits. The simile also rejects the individual and communal identity of enslaved people. Whether man, child, or woman, all of the "checkers" are treated the same, an approach that denies the individual identities of enslaved people. However, the comparison also renders enslaved people as singular pieces, disregarding the relationships between enslaved people.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Blood Eddy:
In Chapter 10, Paul D reflects on his further enslavement after Sweet Home and discusses how he began to tremble. He attributes the sensation to his blood, which he compares to a frozen river melting.
A flutter of a kind, in the chest, then the shoulder blades. It felt like rippling—gentle at first and then wild. As though the further south they led him the more his blood, frozen like an ice pond for twenty years, began thawing, breaking into pieces that, once melted, had no choice but to swirl and eddy. Sometimes it was in his leg. Then again it moved to the base of his spine. By the time they unhitched him from the wagon and he saw nothing but dogs and two shacks in a world of sizzling grass, the roiling blood was shaking him to and fro. But no one could tell.
Paul D reveals his deteriorating resilience after being dehumanized by Schoolteacher by comparing his blood to solid ice falling apart. At first, Paul D qualifies the comparison using a simile ("like an ice pond"), only suggesting a similarity between the nature of his blood and an ice pond. However, as he begins to speak more about the way his blood moves and controls him, the general comparison of blood to water unfolds into a metaphor. This change can be seen when he directly asserts that his blood is taking on water-like behaviors like swirling and eddying. The combined usage of these literary devices reflects the gradual intensification of Paul D's trembling.
Furthermore, Paul D's description of his blood moving in circular water-like motions parallels his inability to move forward in life due to his trauma. In Georgia, this emerges as an inability to move his body outside of work, resulting in him going through the motions rather than fully living. After he escapes, his circular movements continue through his meaningless wandering since it is as if he is walking in circles. When Beloved moves Paul D out of 124, he claims she is "worse than the blood eddy," demonstrating his continued struggle to gain control over his body and the past.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Hawk:
In Chapter 17, when Stamp Paid reveals to Paul D that Sethe killed Beloved, he spares Paul D some details that he still shares with the audience. One of these details is that in his account of the murder, he compares Sethe to a hawk.
So Stamp Paid did not tell him how she flew, snatching up her children like a hawk on the wing; how her face beaked, how her hands worked like claws, how she collected them every which way: one on her shoulder, one under her arm, one by the hand, the other shouted forward into the woodshed filled with just sunlight and shavings now because there wasn’t any wood.
Beloved uses the simile to demonstrate how the community views Sethe's actions as violent and animalistic (in contrast to Sethe's perception of her murder as an act of love). By depicting Sethe as an animal, the novel renders her unintelligible. The comparison cruelly recalls Schoolteacher's animalization of Sethe and reflects the way some Black people adopt the dehumanizing language and stereotypes of white oppressors. However, the simile also demonstrates how Sethe's fear and pain regarding slavery made her adopt the animalistic instincts Schoolteacher ascribed to her. In its more positive connotation, the free-flying hawk invokes the imagery of freedom, showing how Sethe's primary goal at this moment was the freedom of her and her children at any cost. Furthermore, Sethe's depiction as a bird of prey emphasizes the fierceness of her maternal protection against the incoming white horsemen, even as it hurts her children.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 24
Explanation and Analysis—Rag Doll:
The novel compares Paul D and Sethe to rag dolls when describing how Beloved manipulated them. This imagery first appears when Beloved slowly pushes Paul D out of 124 in Chapter 24.
And then she moved him. Just when doubt, regret and every single unasked question was packed away, long after he believed he had willed himself into being, at the very time and place he wanted to take root—she moved him. From room to room. Like a rag doll.
By comparing Paul D to a young girl's plaything, Paul D is humiliated and emasculated, showing how powerless he feels in the face of Beloved and the traumatic past that she evokes from him. Furthermore, this depiction recalls the other times in the novel when Paul D struggles with bodily autonomy due to his trauma. For example, in Georgia, he can't move his body except when he works. Even after he escapes the chain gang, Paul D is in a constant state of wandering. His moving from room to room parallels how he only wanders out of the fear that the past will catch up to him if he settles down. Thus, he struggles to settle with Sethe because the past finds him through Beloved.
Denver likewise compares Sethe to a rag doll when Beloved begins to dominate 124 in Chapter 26:
Who could she stand in front of who wouldn’t shame her on learning that her mother sat around like a rag doll, broke down, finally, from trying to take care of and make up for.
This comparison highlights how Sethe has become empty and lifeless under the weight of her guilt and pain due to the trauma of slavery. Her traumatic past, especially the memory of murdering her daughter, is controlling her current actions. The simile further highlights the broken mother-child bond between Sethe and her daughters. Her attempts to perform motherhood render her into a figure controlled by Beloved rather than being in an active maternal relationship with her.
Furthermore, the comparison of both Paul D and Sethe to rag dolls invokes the imagery of the racist rag dolls popular in the era, emphasizing the dehumanizing nature of slavery. Both characters struggle with a loss of identity and become products of slavery, like rag dolls.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 26
Explanation and Analysis—Rag Doll:
The novel compares Paul D and Sethe to rag dolls when describing how Beloved manipulated them. This imagery first appears when Beloved slowly pushes Paul D out of 124 in Chapter 24.
And then she moved him. Just when doubt, regret and every single unasked question was packed away, long after he believed he had willed himself into being, at the very time and place he wanted to take root—she moved him. From room to room. Like a rag doll.
By comparing Paul D to a young girl's plaything, Paul D is humiliated and emasculated, showing how powerless he feels in the face of Beloved and the traumatic past that she evokes from him. Furthermore, this depiction recalls the other times in the novel when Paul D struggles with bodily autonomy due to his trauma. For example, in Georgia, he can't move his body except when he works. Even after he escapes the chain gang, Paul D is in a constant state of wandering. His moving from room to room parallels how he only wanders out of the fear that the past will catch up to him if he settles down. Thus, he struggles to settle with Sethe because the past finds him through Beloved.
Denver likewise compares Sethe to a rag doll when Beloved begins to dominate 124 in Chapter 26:
Who could she stand in front of who wouldn’t shame her on learning that her mother sat around like a rag doll, broke down, finally, from trying to take care of and make up for.
This comparison highlights how Sethe has become empty and lifeless under the weight of her guilt and pain due to the trauma of slavery. Her traumatic past, especially the memory of murdering her daughter, is controlling her current actions. The simile further highlights the broken mother-child bond between Sethe and her daughters. Her attempts to perform motherhood render her into a figure controlled by Beloved rather than being in an active maternal relationship with her.
Furthermore, the comparison of both Paul D and Sethe to rag dolls invokes the imagery of the racist rag dolls popular in the era, emphasizing the dehumanizing nature of slavery. Both characters struggle with a loss of identity and become products of slavery, like rag dolls.
Related Themes:
