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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
Similes
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Friend’s Mother:
When Billy first meets the landlady who runs the bed and breakfast where he’s stopped for the night, he notices her kind demeanor. The narrator uses a simile in this moment to capture just how safe Billy feels with the landlady, as seen in the following passage:
She seemed terribly nice. She looked exactly like the mother of one’s best school friend welcoming one into the house to stay for the Christmas holidays. Billy took off his hat and stepped over the threshold.
In this moment—when Billy is still on the doorstep of the bed and breakfast, deciding whether or not he wants to come in—the thing that compels him to trust the landlady is the fact that she “looked exactly like the mother of one’s best school friend” offering to host her son’s friends for the holidays. This simile helps readers to understand how young and naïve Billy is—he is 17 years old, after all, and barely out of school—and also how desperate he is for parental affection. The language here can be read to suggest that he has not had an ideal childhood and likely sought out parental care from his friends’ parents.
This moment is also significant because it highlights how appearances can be deceiving. While Billy sees what he wants to see—a warm older woman who will care for him—the truth is that the landlady is a serial killer who only lets him inside because she wants to kill him and preserve his youthful innocence forever by stuffing him.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Large Eye:
After Billy arrives in Bath, he starts looking for lodging, pausing when he sees a sign for a bed and breakfast. When describing the details of the sign, the narrator uses a simile, as seen in the following passage:
BED AND BREAKFAST, it said. BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST. Each word was like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay where he was and not to walk away from that house, and the next thing he knew, he was actually moving across from the window to the front door of the house, climbing the steps that led up to it, and reaching for the bell.
The simile here—in which the narrator describes each word on the sign looking “like a large black eye staring at [Billy]”—communicates that the bed and breakfast is not a safe place for him. The fact that he seems to be entranced by the eye-like words, which “hold,” “compel,” and “force” him to stop in front of the bed and breakfast and then to walk up the steps and ring the bell, also hints to readers that something is amiss about this situation.
This, of course, proves to be true. Just as the words on the sign manipulate Billy into a false feeling of safety, the landlady does the same, ultimately poisoning Billy in the hopes of killing and stuffing him.
Related Themes:
