The Poisonwood Bible: Similes 18 key examples

Orleanna seems to speak directly to the reader, asking them to identify with the forest and imagine themselves within it. She personifies the jungle such that it has a conscience and eyes in its trees. The trees are metaphorically columns, as if part of an awe-inspiring structure. In the same sentence, Orleanna uses a simile to describe the trees as "like muscular animals," further personifying the forest and emphasizing how alive it is. The frogs are metaphorically "war-painted," and a simile compares them to skeletons. The vines personified into stranglers of other vines. The ant queen is personified into a "ravenous" monarch. Even seedlings on the jungle floor are personified into a choir; Orleanna gives them necks and implies they have agency. All of this imagery not only helps the reader imagine this foreign setting, but also sets up one of the themes of the novel: life and death are deeply intertwined.

Obviously Nathan quotes from the Bible during his sermon, but in her narration, Rachel also alludes to a biblical story, although she gets the name of the mountain wrong. (It's Mount Sinai, although "Mount Syanide" evokes the poison cyanide and is therefore fitting for the poisonous rhetoric Nathan brings to Kilanga.) Rachel compares her father to Moses, but makes the comparison unfavorable by recasting the Ten Commandments (which Moses famously brought down from Mount Sinai) as "ten fresh ways to wreck your life." She also uses a simile to compare Nathan's voice to "a saw ripping into a tree trunk," which makes his preaching violent and harsh. Finally, note the use of italics to demonstrate Nathan's "rising singsong preaching voice." Evangelical preachers are famous for their vivid rhetoric and commanding voices, and Nathan seems to be no exception.

Leah thinks Mama Tataba has created a garden with hills that look "like graves" or "neat burial mounds," a morbid comparison that adds to the strangeness of her new environment. The burial mound metaphor is ironic because these "burial mounds" will actually produce life-sustaining food. In another simile, Leah says her father "came walking fast as if I'd discovered a viper he meant to behead." He seeks to impose American norms on African soil and treats the Congolese villagers' way of life as an evil—like a viper he has to kill in order to be safe. Leah and her father again make the garden "as flat as the Great Plains," a simile that references a part of America dominated by agriculture.

But the flood washes away the seeds and plants, and Nathan realizes Mama Tataba was right:

Our Father had been influenced by Africa. He was out there pushing his garden up into rectangular, flood-proof embankments, exactly the length and width of burial mounds.

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Not long after he leveled the garden, Nathan reshapes it in the way Mama Tataba did earlier. This moment foreshadows much of the book's later events, when the Prices first reject, then accept, and finally rely upon the knowledge and generosity of the villagers.

Adah is the narrator of this anecdote, and the first simile in this passage is hers. To describe her father's disbelief that his daughters could be intelligent, she says he rolls his eyes "as if two dogs in his yard had reportedly been caught whistling 'Dixie.'" This indicates how unlikely he thinks it is that his daughters are gifted: it would be like if someone said dogs were performing a musical duet.

The second simile is Nathan's, and he uses it to argue against his daughters' further education. He claims "sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes." Either the girl will waste the education, which he compares to water escaping the shoes, or the girl will retain the education but be ruined by it, which he compares to the shoes holding water and becoming unwearable as a result. For him, women have one purpose, like shoes, and that purpose renders them unfit for education—either because they are inherently unintelligent or because they ought to be doing something else. This is one of many moments in the story where Nathan is misogynistic and unkind to his daughters. 

Adah uses a simile to compare the platter to the Virgin Mary at the time of Jesus's birth. Like the Virgin Mary, who gave birth in a barn surrounded by animals, the plate is "one amazing, beautiful thing" amid surroundings that the Prices find unpleasantly rustic. This is yet another of the biblical allusions that fill the novel. Adah describes the appearance of the plate with rich visual imagery, and it seems so delicate that it glows when sunlight passes through it. Her claim that "we might worship it" could be read as a joke. But it can also be taken somewhat literally because, at this point, the Price women do seem to crave beautiful objects and reminders of their American lives. The earlier comparison to the Virgin Mary also complicates the "worship" statement: the Prices, as Protestants, would likely disapprove of the Catholic ritual of praying to and venerating Mary. So in this paragraph, the plate becomes a semi-taboo idol of what they might few as a lesser religion.

With a simile, Orleanna compares Nathan's naïve faith to keeping receipts. The simple process of paying for something, keeping the receipt, and getting reimbursed for the purchase later by an authority figure makes more sense in the United States than it does in the Congo, where they are no receipts and, it seems, no reimbursements. Unlike Nathan, Orleanna doubts that their lives are inherently safe because they are on a mission to spread Christianity.

There is also irony in double meaning of "Nzolo," since it can either mean something holy or something humorously and unintentionally gross. Orleanna expands this ironic misunderstanding to show the reader her wavering faith in God. She says she understands the Father of Fish Bait, a vengeful God who would metaphorically "just as soon dangle us from a hook." She also understands a kind and conventional Jesus who is Father in Heaven. But she cannot imagine them metaphorically "living in the same house," as in, being part of the same divinity, which is how Protestants understand God and Jesus.

Kakakaka metaphorically turns the babies into a "small black pitcher" and then spills the contents of the pitcher. This is a sad and vivid image of the death by dehydration that babies suffer if they have untreated diarrhea. Whatever kakakaka is (presumably some sort of bacterial infection), it causes water to leave the babies faster than it can be replenished.  The reader isn't told the English name of the disease, just that it spreads more quickly during rainy seasons. Eventually, Adah says that wave of deaths has subsided, and she uses a simile to describe the aftermath:

Now the thunderstorms have ended. The funerals are drying up as slowly as the puddles. [...] The women beat out their sisal mats and replant their fields while grieving for lost children.

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Just as the rain caused the deaths, so too do the funerals seem to mirror the water left over after the deluge: they dry up, but slowly. The impact of both the thunderstorms and the kakakaka they brought remains a mark on the land and village. Nor do the mothers who lost children have any downtime to grieve. Instead, they simultaneously mourn and do the housework necessary to sustain themselves and their families.

In a simile, Orleanna compares herself to the family's pet bird, Methuselah. When Nathan opened Methuselah's cage, expecting the bird to fly away, Methuselah refused out of fear and disuse of his wings. Orleanna sees her own willingness to follow and obey Nathan in the same light: she feels she is simply not used to exerting her own agency and therefore doesn't. Metaphorically, then, she "had no wings." Orleanna also personifies the Congo into a "barefoot bride of men" who promised the Congo safety and growth but instead robbed the country. This comparison reminds the reader of Orleanna's own past as an unsuspecting, obedient, and impoverished bride to Nathan.

One simile says Mama Mwanza sits "as if planted." This is a comparison that allows readers to better imagine the sitting position of this woman, whose legs are damaged. This simile also suggests that it is Mama Mwanza, and not Belgium or any other power that lays claim to the Congo, who is of this land. In other words, she grows from the Congolese environment. In another simile, Leach says that the Mwanza daughters pound manioc with the steady rhythm of pistons. This device, as well as the imagery throughout the paragraph, allows readers a taste of the everyday life of a Congolese family. Visual and auditory details such as Mama Mwanza's call and the fire licking a "dented cooking can" not only allow readers to more vividly imagine the domestic life of a rural Congolese family, but they also indicate that Leah is paying more attention to the people around her and their lives.

Leah metaphorically calls the jungle a green wall, a seemingly impenetrable and mysterious force. And her simile says that this jungle is "as permanent as a heartbeat"—in other words, the jungle is a steady and often unnoticed but necessary and omnipresent part of Congolese life. Another metaphor makes the humans into "little mice," which demonstrates that anyone living in the Congo is vulnerable and will have to fight for his or her life without any certainty in what comes next. When Leah reflects on American farming, she uses a simile to compare farmers on their tractors to "kings on thrones." Americans, she says, feel an ownership and power over their land. In contrast, the Congo's natural environment seems to control the people who live there. Leah also conjures up visual, tactile, and auditory imagery to describe the forest: she mentions bird calls, the breathing of animals, and the color and wetness of the flora.

The ants are metaphorically "boiling" the landscape. With a simile, Leah compares the ants to "black flowing lava." The ants also make the trees metaphorically seethe and turn the grass into a "field of dark daggers." The first two of these comparisons evokes painfully hot liquid, and all of the metaphors are violent or destructive in some way. Additionally, Leah's description of the ants is full of visual and sensory imagery: every surface is covered by these tiny black creatures that constantly scurry over the landscape, and the ants even smell "vinegary" when stepped on. All of this figurative language allows the reader to imagine the overwhelming violence and pain of an ant swarm.

This stylized retelling of late-20th-century African history is accurate: during the Cold War, the United States and its allies were extraordinarily concerned that underdeveloped nations like the newly independent Congo would elect communist leaders and ally themselves with the Soviet Union. Perhaps the most famous example of the Soviet Union and United States battling over a foreign nation's allegiance is the Vietnam War. One of the purposes of The Poisonwood Bible is to persuade American readers, through the viewpoints of American characters like Orleanna, that they should oppose their government's interference in the domestic operations of other countries.

In this extended chess metaphor, the world powers that seek to manipulate the Congo are calm chess players, moving powerful and vulnerable pieces alike to achieve their goals. As part of this violent game, the chess players weigh the benefits and drawbacks of certain African leaders they would like to either place into power or depose. The simile that compares "African names" to flowers "crushed idly between thumb and forefinger" indicates that, just as the chess players do not care about the well-being of their pawns, they do not mind sacrificing leaders like Lumumba to get what they want. The powers-that-be use, manipulate, and kill these African leaders without much thought or care. Both racism and imperialism are ideologies that enable the West to "idly" kill or imprison African leaders for the West's gain.

By setting up an election for Jesus, Tata Ndu points out the conflict between Christianity and democracy, which are both ideologies brought from more developed Western nations to Africa. A simile compares Ndu's careful pronouncement of his English words to the precise placement of stones. This simile suggests Ndu's words have weight, like rocks, and that he handles them exactly and mindfully. He wants his message completely understood.

When Tata Ndu tells Nathan that "You say these things are good," he speaks both to Nathan as an evangelical, who has insisted that civilized people are Christians with democracies, and to foreigners who hope to "civilize" Africa in general. The election on Jesus generates situational irony because, despite insisting both Christianity and democracy are good, Nathan also insists they cannot be combined in this way. He also can't offer a coherent reason as to why they cannot be combined. Tata Ndu undermines Western imperial ideology by taking its arguments to their logical extreme, a process that leads to the democratic village-wide rejection of Christianity. Tata Ndu works within the Western framework he's been presented, but in doing so, he makes that same framework seem arbitrary and half-baked.

It's worth mentioning that Christianity and democracy have both coexisted and clashed over Western history. A more thoughtful or patient evangelist than Nathan might have been able to explain why voting on Jesus is a bad idea. But what Ndu rejects here is not necessarily democracy or even Christianity. Instead, he rejects Nathan's self-righteousness and conviction that Americans are more intelligent, civilized, and logical than the Congolese villagers.

One simile compares the scavengers to "ruined flagpoles," bent to search for food with their clothes flapping behind them. Notice as well that Adah says "we were like odd ruined flagpoles," as opposed to saying either "I was" or "they were." The use of "we" suggests that she has become one of the villagers in this moment, and just like them, she must scrounge for burnt insects in order to feed herself. The imagery is visual and auditory: the flagpole metaphor allows readers to better imagine the sight of the scavenging, and Adah also tells the reader that the field still hisses from the fire that has passed over it. The caterpillars look like "small twigs" that blend into the ground so well that Adah must sense them rather than seeing them.

In a simile, Orleanna compares her grief to a "swimmer's long hair in water." Just as a swimmer's hair floats behind her while she goes forward but will collect around her face when she stops, Orleanna tells the reader that while escaping her grief is impossible, there is a way to avoid feeling it: continuing to move. At least while she's still in the Congo, she has plenty of things to distract herself, such as keeping her remaining children alive and safe. But if she can't find things to do, the grief will drag her down like heavy tendrils of hair.

Then, two more similes express the idea that Orleanna's grief is "as real as rope or the absence of air" and likewise might kill her. These similes, which suggest strangulation, give the reader a sense of how grief physically feels for Orleanna (like having no air), and they also emphasize the seriousness of the despair she is in. Both similes here also tie back to the swimming simile before, because the hair that Orleanna metaphorically says strangles her is rope-like, and drowning involves an absence of air. This series of interconnected literary devices makes Orleanna's grief and hopelessness more vivid and visceral for the reader.

Leah uses a simile to compare the place "where the largest rules are made," which can be understood to mean America and Europe, to heaven. Just as the God that Nathan believes in seems arbitrary, fickle, distant and uncaring, the powerful men of the world are likewise withdrawn and cruel.

Metaphorically, for these powerful men who run Western governments, "white and black lives are different kinds of currencies." White lives—such as those of the murdered foreigners and even, to an extent, the lives of the Prices—are valued enough for foreign nations to take notice when those lives are threatened. Metaphorically comparing white lives to the "hard Belgian franc" also reminds the reader that this imbalance is a result of colonialism, since Belgium once controlled the Congo. Because white lives, like the Belgian franc, are tied to something valuable (an influential former colonial power and gold, respectively), they are worth protecting. Congolese lives are metaphorically compared to Congolese currency—like the currency, Congolese lives are not valued by people in the West or elsewhere.

This description of the jungle helps the reader understand how its composition influences farming and life in the Congo. The visual imagery of red soil, fungi, and vines allows us to imagine this elaborate and fragile balance of plants and animals. Leah personifies the jungle, first with simile in which she compares "clearing a rain forest" to "stripping an animal first of its fur, then its skin," which indicates how abhorrent she finds deforesting. The personified land "howls," has a face, and can die. Another simile compares the destroyed soil to "the mouths of whales." Metaphorically, "fungi and vines throw a blanket" over the destroyed earth. Finally, the "rowdy society of flora and fauna" evokes a crowded, lively, and barely cooperative community. 

Leah also uses the idiom "fly on a wing and a prayer" to describe the often unsuccessful attempt to grow annual crops. (As opposed to perennial plants, annuals must be replanted each harvest, so they are not permanent parts of the land.) To fly on a wing and a prayer means to attempt something that will probably not succeed, like a plane landing with only one wing left. 

She metaphorically calls this ecosystem a "trembling geologic plate." This is also literal, since Africa (like all continents) is shaped by the movement of tectonic plates. But the plate becomes metaphorical when Leah describes deforestation in the Congo as "[clearing] off part of the plate" and creating an imbalance. This imbalance causes the plate to tilt and everything to fall off, just as deforestation hurts the rest of the environment in the Congo.

In this passage, the personified land revives itself from its previous murder and becomes alive again. The murder of the land is a metaphor that could refer either to the destruction of Congolese self-determination or the destruction of the actual land for food and natural resources (or both). Personified animals "utter joyful, astonishing words," which makes the natural environment of Congo sound like a being with agency that desires self-determination and a capable government as much as the Congolese people do.

Methuselah, the Prices' pet parrot who was eaten after Nathan set him free, also returns as a symbol in this passage. Recall that Methuselah repeated the words and phrases of the Price family, the villagers, and Brother Fowles. Alongside curse words and Kikongo greetings, Methuselah also apparently picked up the call for Congolese independence. This reference to Methuselah could be read as a metaphor for those killed or harmed in fight for independence: despite their deaths, the call for independence survives, and their ideas continue to spread.