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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
Chapter Forty-One: Free At Last
Explanation and Analysis—Fleecy Clouds:
Chapter 41 ends with a simile comparing Jacobs's memories of her grandmother to "fleecy clouds floating over a dark and troubled sea:"
It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could. Yet the retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with those gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good old grandmother, like light, fleecy clouds floating over a dark and troubled sea.
This simile helps Jacobs convey the sense that her story, as traumatic as it may be, is a human one with dimension and complexity. The "dark and troubled sea" represents enslavement and all the horrors it has visited upon their family, including the fact that it has driven them physically apart from one another. Still, her memories of Grandmother float above this sea and are themselves "tender" and soft. The image of "light, fleecy clouds" conjures the idea of cumulus clouds, which occur in fair or sometimes stormy weather. "Fleecy" suggests that the clouds might feel like a soft white sheep if Jacobs could reach out and touch them. This type of cloud is often compared to a cotton ball, and it is worth noting that Jacobs instead evokes sheep's wool. Cotton production historically relied on enslaved people's labor, and Jacobs is emphasizing that many of her memories of Grandmother are soft, comforting, and outside the vice grip of slavery. Sometimes her relationship with Grandmother was stormy because it was a human relationship, not just because they were a Black family in the South.
By evoking sheep, Jacobs also positions herself as a shepherd whose work in writing this memoir is to protect her memories of Grandmother and her own complicated life. The fondness with which Jacobs describes these memories does not diminish the force of her argument against the institution of slavery. Rather, it urges the reader to work towards a world in which the sea does not have to be quite so dark and troubled for Black Americans, and in which family relationships might remain close instead of distant.
Related Themes:
