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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—Like Headphones:
Near the beginning of the story, as Shaila is processing the news of the deaths of her husband and sons in a terrorist attack, she takes Valium to help with her panic. When describing the effects of the pills, she uses a simile, as seen in the following passage:
I wonder if pills alone explain this calm. Not peace, just a deadening quiet. I was always controlled, but never repressed. Sound can reach me, but my body is tensed, ready to scream. I hear their voices all around me. I hear my boys and Vikram cry, “Mommy, Shaila!” and their screams insulate me, like headphones.
Shaila uses a simile when describing how the cries of her dead family members that she hears in her head are “like headphones” that insulate her from the real world. While many people would experience the imagined desperate shouts of their family members as the opposite of headphones, the Valium seems to have distorted Shaila’s emotions and sense of reality here.
It is notable that, even when Shaila stops taking the Valium, she remains in a state of numbness for much of the story. This is Mukherjee’s way of capturing how grief is different for everyone. While some may rage and wail, Shaila represses her emotions in order to survive them.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Like Shapeshifters:
Near the end of the story, the government social worker Judith Templeton tells Shaila that it is positive that she has arrived at the stage of grief where she accepts reality as it is, letting go of her dead family members in the process. In Shaila’s internal reflections on Judith's judgment of her, she uses a simile, as seen in the following passage:
How do I tell Judith Templeton that my family surrounds me, and that like creatures in epics, they’ve changed shapes? She sees me as calm and accepting but worries that I have no job, no career. My closest friends are worse off than I. I cannot tell her my days, even my nights, are thrilling.
Here, Shaila uses a simile when noting that she wants to tell Judith about how her deceased family members are “like creatures in epics” that have simply “changed shapes,” allowing them to be with her even though they are dead. This is a reference to the fact that her husband and sons have come to her in visions from beyond the grave at different points in the story, offering words of encouragement.
By juxtaposing Shaila’s “calm and accepting” external presentation with her “thrilling” internal life full of conversations with her dead family members, Mukherjee highlights the complex and contradictory nature of grief. This scene also highlights the clash between Shaila's spiritual approach to reckoning with her grief and Judith's secular approach.
Related Themes:
