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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 Four
Explanation and Analysis—A House's Rooms:
Just moments before proposing to destroy the Cootings Machine in Part 4, Klara chats with the Father as they kill time together in the city. When the Father doubts the AF’s abilities to “fully” fathom the heart of a human, Klara challenges his notions with a memorable simile:
‘The heart you speak of,’ I said. ‘It might indeed be the hardest part of Josie to learn. It might be like a house with many rooms. Even so, a devoted AF, given time, could walk through each of those rooms, studying them carefully in turn, until they became like her own home.’
In comparing the heart to a house, Klara expresses the finite limits of the human condition. The simile’s literal-mindedness creates a confusion between the physical and spiritual. The house is often closely associated with mind-body dualism: in this philosophical framework, the house usually represents the body, or the structure that the soul resides in. In Klara’s case, though, this idea of a “soul” is no different from what encloses it. Personality, quirks, and fears are merely parts that can be stress-tested and analyzed. The human heart is a house, and this comparison places the human spirit in strictly material terms.
The simile also treads lightly on the irony that Josie’s house is an “Open Floor” plan or, in other words, that it lacks specialized rooms. The Father eventually counters Klara with the possibility that there are “infinite rooms” in the house of this human heart. But if Josie’s heart is anything like her physical house, then it must also be remarkably easy to study and imitate. Klara’s simile suggests, in its subtle way, that modern society—as seen from even its design principles—may have made people more replaceable than ever before.
Related Themes:
