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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
Similes
Explanation and Analysis—Climber Sonny:
After years of not being in contact, the narrator decides to write to his brother Sonny in prison. In Sonny’s letter back to the narrator, he uses a simile to capture how much hearing from the narrator meant to him:
You don’t know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn’t write. But now I feel like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside.
In the simile here, Sonny describes himself as feeling “like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep […] hole,” and, upon receiving the narrator’s letter, he felt like he finally “saw the sun up there” and now feels ready to “get outside.” It is likely that the “hole” that Sonny describes here is a reference to his drug addiction, or possibly a depression that set in after he was imprisoned for drug use (not for the first time).
The fact that the narrator’s letter—a symbol of the narrator’s love and support for his brother—is as powerful as “the sun” to Sonny indicates the deep familial bond between the two men. Even though they have each hurt each other multiple times over the course of their lives (the narrator by leaving Sonny alone after their parents died, Sonny by being in and out of prison), they still care deeply about each other.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Chasm or Bridge:
When the narrator goes to meet Sonny after he is released from prison, he uses a metaphor to describe the emotional distance between them, as seen in the following passage:
[Sonny] was smiling all over his face. “It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see you.”
The seven years’ difference in our ages lay between us like a chasm: I wondered if these years would ever operate between us as a bridge.
The metaphor here—in which the narrator describes how the seven-year difference in their ages “lay between [them] like a chasm”—helps readers to understand just how much emotional distance there is between the two brothers. Not only are they seven years apart, but they haven’t seen each other in years (since Sonny has been homeless or in prison) and have very different personalities—the narrator is regimented and controlled while Sonny is passionate and artistic.
The narrator uses a second metaphor in this passage when wondering to himself if the “chasm” between the two of them could ever “operate between [them] as a bridge.” The fact that he is able to hope for this change suggests that there is a possibility for the two brothers to feel emotionally close in the future, something that is also alluded to at the end of the story, when the narrator finally watches Sonny perform and understands why he has chosen the life that he has.
Related Themes:
