The Boys in the Boat: Similes 6 key examples

Joe and Harry are both characterized by motionlessness during this scene: Joe "froze" while his father is "blank and expressionless, like stone." In fact, while Brown almost certainly intended the subject of the simile to be Harry Rantz, the syntax is somewhat ambiguous. The simile "like stone" could refer to the subject of the sentence, Joe’s “gray-blue eyes,” or the object of the sentence, “his father’s face.” Either way, the simile conveys a notion of time stopping for both of the characters as the weight of the situation sinks in.

Harry leaving Joe is a significant event in Joe’s life, and Joe is literally speechless as a result. Brown choosing to characterize both Joe and Harry as not moving takes on an added significance when contrasted with the main focus of the book: Joe’s rowing career. Brown’s descriptions of rowing are detailed, action-packed, and beautiful; more than anything, they describe the constant motion that is rowing. The simile then not only emphasizes the importance of this moment for Joe by portraying him as frozen in place, but it portrays a 10-year-old Joe as unable to move in a story that will later describe the beauty and tact with which Joe moves as a rower. The simile then highlights Joe Rantz's growth throughout the book, with Joe transforming from frozen in place as a child to flying across the water as an adult.

The simile is relatively straightforward, describing Rantz as feeling as if he's "everyone’s poor cousin" because of his tattered sweater, and the ensuing mockery wearing that sweater brings. While the simile indicates that Rantz feels looked down upon, it also conveys a sense of kinship. Cousins are, after all, part of one’s extended family. Kinship of any kind was especially important for Rantz considering the strained relationship he had with his father and stepmother. The simile then suggests that Joe is beginning to bond with his teammates, even as they mock him for his sweater.

Joe eventually learns that some of his teammates experience similar financial hardships to his own, and Brown makes a point of explaining that the Great Depression plunged the vast majority of Americans into poverty. Furthermore, it is only once Joe is able to trust his teammates that they become a truly great crew. The narrative thus reveals the beginning of these formative bonds, even as Joe feels more dissimilar from his teammates than similar to them.

By comparing boat building to practicing religion, Pocock suggests that there is an intangible, spiritual component to boat building in addition to the time, effort, and resources required. The fact that this simile occurs during Rantz's first extended encounter with the shop makes it particularly significant, as Rantz ends up assisting Pocock frequently in the shop. Rantz then figuratively subscribes to the religion that is boat-building. Importantly, what Pocock is saying of building a boat is equally true of rowing a boat: there is something more than technique and power necessary. Pocock himself later explains that trust and teamwork is also required. There is something religious to that communal trust, in which many people move in unison as one crew.

The religion simile, and the ensuing claim that a boatman feels they "left a piece [...] behind in it forever," highlights the intangible spirit that goes into building a fast boat. On one hand, this simile emphasizes the importance of the Husky Clipper, the boat the American crew rows against Germany, which was specially crafted by Pocock for the Olympic races. On the other hand, this simile shapes the way the reader experiences the ensuing descriptions of Rantz and his teammates rowing: every time they are rowing in a boat, they are taking part in a somewhat divine experience together.

Brown compares Bobby Moch, the University of Washington coxswain who coxed the 1936 gold medal-winning crew, to the plantation owner and antagonist Simon Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin. While Uncle Tom’s Cabin was considered groundbreaking at the time of its publication, it has been heavily criticized more recently for its portrayal of Black Americans. In fact, “Uncle Tom” has become a derogatory term for a Black person who caters to White oppressors at the expense of their own community.

At first glance, this simile seems borderline insensitive, comparing Moch's coxing to a plantation owner whipping his slaves. The allusion does make the simile hyperbolic in nature, underscoring the sheer extent to which Moch was able to get the most out of his rowers. The out-of-nowhere allusion to a seemingly unrelated novel also surprises the reader much in the same way Moch's voice is surprising to those who hear it. Later in the novel, however, Brown reveals that Bobby Moch was unknowingly Jewish. Moch’s father hid his ethnicity from his son out of shame and in an attempt to evade antisemitism. Brown’s allusion to Uncle Tom's Cabin takes on new meaning in light of this fact. The simile now becomes somewhat ironic, with Moch coxswaining as if he were one of literature’s most reviled plantation owners when Moch himself was a member of an oppressed demographic. 

In a book full of descriptions of rowing, this quotation stands out. Similes comparing the rowers to “pendulums, in perfect synchronicity” and the rower’s blades to “the wings of seabirds flying in formation” convey the technical precision with which the crew is rowing. The crew is rowing in perfect unison, as if obeying the laws of physics (as a pendulum) or the laws of nature (like animals who move in unison without active thought). Swing, the near-mystical state of rowing in perfect unison such that the boat flies across the water with an unnatural ease, requires the highest level of synchronicity, and the similes highlight just how unified the rowers were as they raced. 

Brown also makes use of imagery when describing this overwhelmingly large victory: the description emphasizes what is seen, ironically through how hard it was for both boats to be kept in frame by photographers. This description creatively highlights just how far ahead the Washington rowers have moved by the end of the race. This race, a commanding victory in which the Washington rowers reach the flow state of swing, necessitates writing that highlights just how fast the Washington rowers are moving.

Importantly, this race is the first race of Al Ulbrickson’s desired Olympic lineup in the boat made by Pocock for the Olympics, The Husky Clipper. Brown’s description takes on even more significance within that context: the simile and imagery combine to suggest that there is something uniquely fast and special about this group of athletes.

When the Americans are exhausted and nearly without energy—and coxswain Bobby Moch is leading the rowers, squeezing out every ounce of power—the rowing appears as beautiful as ever. This description of rowing is particularly important as the Americans win the race by only six-tenths of a second: every single stroke was needed to win the race. If the Americans lost focus for even a second, they would not have won gold. The simile "bending like bows" highlights the sheer power of the rowers, with Rantz and his teammates loading up their oars with the power of someone drawing back a bow before loosing an arrow.

At the same time, Brown describes the rowing with imagery highlighting forward progress above all else: from the "shell's whale-oil-slick hull ghosting forward" to the "sharp cedar prow slicing through the dark water" and the simile suggesting the rowers and boat combined are "bounding fiercely forward like a living thing." As an author, Brown must somehow describe the sheer speed of the boat as the crew rows faster than they have ever rowed before in the most important race of their life. Brown accomplishes this task by referencing the forward progress of the boat in numerous ways within the same paragraph, making use of stark visual imagery and figurative language to highlight that the boat is surging forward towards the finish line.

The simile describing "boat and men forged together" as "bounding fiercely forward like a living thing" emphasizes the unity of swing, the near-mythical state of rowing in perfect synchronicity. The rowers must row as one, each rower mirroring the man sitting ahead of them perfectly while dancing with the boat itself. The simile, through describing the rowers and the boat as one living organism, emphasizes the complex unity required to row as fast as possible. All of The Boys in the Boat builds to this moment, where Rantz and his teammates win gold against the fastest rowers in the world. Brown's use of imagery and simile conveys the speed and beauty of the American crew during this incredible moment in history.