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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 an Insect:
During his evening walk through his neighborhood, Mead is stopped by an automated police car that shines a bright light on him, illuminating him in the dark November night. At the beginning of this interaction, the narrator uses a simile to compare Mead to a moth, as seen in the following passage:
He was within a block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.
The narrator uses a simile to capture how Mead is “not unlike a night moth” in the way that he is initially “stunned by the illumination” of the police car’s light before being “drawn toward it.” This description helps readers to understand that Mead does not react angrily or violently to the police car stopping him during his walk, but is surprised and then accommodating. In other words, Mead is not the sort of nonconformist who is belligerent or aggressive—he respects the laws of the society, even as he refuses to follow some of its social expectations (as seen in him walking at night rather than sitting in front of the television).
Notably, this moment is followed, on the next page, by yet another simile comparing Mead to an insect:
The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.
Here, Mead is no longer “drawn toward” the police car’s light but trapped there like “a museum specimen” (or insect) with a needle forcibly holding him in place. This slight change in the simile helps readers understand that nothing good is going to come of this interaction for Mead. And, in fact, nothing does—the police car ends up forcing him to get inside before taking him to a psychiatric facility for people with “regressive tendencies.”
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Christmas Tree:
When describing the way that the cold air feels in Mead’s lungs as he walks through his neighborhood on a cold November night, the narrator uses a simile, as seen in the following passage:
There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow.
The narrator uses a simile when describing how the cold air makes Mead’s lungs “blaze like a Christmas tree,” describing the “cold light going on and off” in his lungs and comparing the frosty air to “invisible snow” covering the tree’s branches. This simile is important for a few reasons. First, it suggests that Mead’s winter walks have a spiritual quality to them, given that breathing in the cold air reminds him of the Christmas holiday. In this way, Bradbury communicates the reverence that Mead feels for nature as a whole.
This simile is also important because it helps readers to understand how Mead is “lit up” by time spent in nature. Unlike all of the people cooped up in their houses watching television with the curtains closed, Mead is out in the natural world, no matter how frosty and cold. This is one of the many moments in which Bradbury highlights Mead’s nonconforming and unusual (for his society, at least) nature.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Alone with Cigar Smoke:
Near the beginning of the story, when introducing readers to Mead—and his love of walking—the narrator uses a hyperbole and a simile, as seen in the following passage:
He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.
The hyperbole here—in which the narrator describes how Mead is “alone in this world of A.D. 2053”—is clearly exaggerated, given the fact that he lives in a city of three million people (as stated later in the story). The narrator uses this language in order to help readers understand just how lonely Mead feels, as an unmarried and childless man who has not run into a single person on the street in ten whole years.
The simile here—in which the narrator describes how Mead’s breath looked “like the smoke of a cigar”—helps readers to understand just how cold it is outside. This is important because it communicates to readers that walking—and spending time in nature—is so important to Mead that he’s willing to do so even in freezing temperatures.
Related Themes:
