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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
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—A Sleepwalker:
In this simile, Richard compares himself to a sleepwalker during his first few days at Hampden College:
And I was happy in those first days as really I’d never been before, roaming like a sleepwalker, stunned and drunk with beauty.
Having come from Plano, which Richard illustrates with "drive-ins, tract homes, waves of heat rising from the blacktop," it is no wonder that he can hardly believe what he is seeing at Hampden College in Vermont. He is not only escaping his past, but also stepping into a future he never believed was possible. Sleepwalking here is synonymous with dreaming; Richard cannot believe that his new life in Hampden is a reality.
This simile also highlights Richard's naivety in the beginning of the novel, where he sees Hampden as nothing more than a picture of beauty and happiness. This helps explain his inability to recognize the group’s strange behavior as anything more than strange. Eventually, it is the beauty of New England and the freedom it offers that endanger Richard the most and blind him from the true dangers at hand. In the beginning, he is "drunk with beauty," but by the end of the novel, Richard is consistently drunk with guilt and plagued with nightmares.
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Explanation and Analysis—Francis as a Crow:
Before Richard's first official class with Julian, he takes note of Francis Abernathy, whom he compares to a bird using a simile:
As I was on my way there for my first class, I saw Francis Abernathy stalking across the meadow like a black bird, his coat flapping dark and crowlike in the wind.
Still in the beginning of his time at Hampden College, Richard is unfamiliar with the group of Greek students, all of whom seem strange and uptight, acting aloof towards him. Despite their behavior, he continues to be fascinated by the students and their lavish lifestyles. As a result, he longs to become a part of this group, much like someone who sees a bird in flight and wishes they too could fly.
Comparing Francis to a black bird emphasizes his mysterious aura, a characteristic that also applies to the group as a whole. Even the language in this simile implies a certain enigmatic quality about Francis and the other Greek students. He does not walk across the meadow, but instead stalks as if he is hiding something. His black coat trails behind him in the manner of a spy or a villain. There is something about the group that piques Richard's interest at the start, yet he can never seem to pull back the dark veil surrounding them.
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Explanation and Analysis—An Expendable Past:
Richard does not speak much about his past before Hampden, but the little he does share paints a picture of a dreary and insignificant life. With a simile, he compares his life in California to a plastic cup:
Plano. The word conjures up drive-ins, tract homes, waves of heat rising from the blacktop. My years there created for me an expendable past, disposable as a plastic cup. Which I suppose was a very great gift, in a way. On leaving home I was able to fabricate a new and far more satisfying history, full of striking, simplistic environmental influences; a colorful past, easily accessible to strangers.
Richard equates his past to a disposable plastic cup, which is something that can be discarded and forgotten with ease. Through this simile, Richard shows indifference towards his parents as well as his eagerness to forget them, move on, and create a new story for himself. Richard calling his past "disposable" proves that he wants to forget his Plano years completely, suggesting that there's nothing from those years to which he feels attached. This sense of detachment only emphasizes his desperate need to craft a new life at Hampden College. It is this desperation to create a new persona that draws him towards the Greek students and their murderous plot.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Black Death:
When Richard attends a Friday night party at Hampden, he counts on the fact that the other Greek students will not be there. He describes their aversion to parties with a hyperbolic simile and allusion:
I knew none of my fellow Greek students would be there. Having been to every Friday night party since school began, I knew they avoided them like the Black Death.
Richard suggests that the Greek students' avoid parties as heartily as one would avoid the Black Death. This comparison serves not only as a simile emphasizing the Greek students’ aversion to modern enjoyments, but also as an allusion to the infamous disease that rampaged the world in the 14th century.
In this moment, Richard also begins to understand the modus operandi of the Greek students in terms of establishments and hobbies. By using an allusion to the Black Death, Richard suggests that Henry and the other students are living in a different millennium and that they see themselves as a different class of people. Moreover, using such a gruesome and weighty simile emphasizes how the Greek students view the rest of Hampden as inferior. In their view, students like Judy Poovey are as untouchable and doomed as someone who has contracted the plague.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Bloody Accident:
In Chapter 2, while the Greek students amble around a nearby lake, Camilla slices open her foot on a shard of glass. Richard uses a simile to describe Camilla's blood and is mesmerized by its movement in the water:
In the water, a dark plume of blood blossomed by her foot; as I blinked, a thin red tendril spiraled up and curled over her pale toes, undulating in the water like a thread of crimson smoke.
Moments later in Chapter 2, Richard uses a comparable simile to describe the bloody accident:
The bottom of her foot was glazed with red. Fat droplets ticked off the edge, spreading and dispersing like drops of ink in the clear water.
Because Camilla has sliced an artery, there is an unnatural amount of blood seeping from her wound. Even though this is a terrifying moment in the novel, Richard describes the incident and the injury with an eerie calmness. His similes are artistic descriptions grounded in nature and art, with blood like threads of smoke and drops of ink in the water.
Typically, fear would take hold of someone in a moment like this, but Richard is completely unresponsive. In fact, his indifference and nonchalance dulls the terror of the scene. This reaction perhaps foreshadows Richard’s ability to handle stress with levelheadedness during the aftermath of Bunny’s murder.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Bad Child:
When Bunny takes Richard out to lunch on his dime, he realizes he is unable to pay and must call Henry to take care of the bill. After Henry shows up to rescue the two, Richard uses a simile to emphasize Bunny's childish behavior:
Henry paid the check while Bunny hung behind him like a bad child. The ride home was excruciating. Bunny, in the back seat, kept up a sally of brilliant but doomed attempts at conversation, which one by one flared and sank, while Henry kept his eyes on the road and I sat in the front beside him, fidgeting with the built-in ashtray.
Throughout the novel, Richard consistently points out Bunny's juvenile nature, primarily through his impatience and irresponsibility. In this instance, Bunny takes Richard out to a very upscale restaurant but then claims to have forgotten his wallet. Richard later learns that this is a stunt that Bunny frequently pulls. When Bunny calls Henry to pay the pill, it becomes clear that Henry often acts as Bunny's father figure, keeping him out of trouble and in line. Even the car ride home paints Henry as a father, particularly while Bunny sits in the back seat and Richard fiddles with the ashtray like a child.
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Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—The Library as a Tomb:
Following Judy Poovey's advice, Richard goes looking for Bunny in the library, which he compares to the inside of a tomb with a simile:
The library was like a tomb, illumined from within by a chill fluorescent light that, by contrast, made the afternoon seem colder and grayer than it was. The windows of the reading room were bright and blank; bookshelves, empty carrels, not a soul.
This grim description comes only pages before Bunny’s murder, the moment the novel has been leading up to since the prologue. Equating the library to a tomb calls attention to the devastating crime the Greek students are about to commit. In this moment, in Richard's mind, the murder has already been committed, and he has already designated the library to be Bunny's resting place.
The story illustrates the library as “blank” and empty. Like a dead body and the tomb that holds it, the library is cold and gray. These characteristics invoke a feeling of dread and therefore foreshadow Bunny's imminent death. Moreover, because the library is the last place that Bunny is seen before his death, it will forever hold his memory and act as his tomb. Such a tomb for Bunny is ironic, especially given his lack of aptitude in comparison to the other Greek students. He even leaves the library to attend "Swing into Spring," the campus-wide party.
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