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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
Prologue
Explanation and Analysis—Flags Flown:
In Orange's Prologue essay, he describes a variety of notable "Indian heads" throughout history, from the murder of Massasoit in 1621, to the massacre of Pequots in 1637, to a story of a state-sponsored killing from an 1854 novel. In all three of these cases, the head of the decapitated Native American was displayed for public view. Orange describes the reason for these gruesome displays in a simile:
The Indian head in the jar, the Indian head on a spike were like flags flown, to be seen, cast broadly. Just like the Indian Head test pattern was broadcast to sleeping Americans as we set sail from our living rooms, over the ocean blue-green glowing airwaves, to the shores, the screens of the New World.
The simile compares the Indian heads to "flags flown." The heads are displayed as a proof of American power and imperialism. This emphasizes Orange's overall claim in the prologue, that American atrocities against Native people were an intentional demonstration of power.
Orange also references the Indian Head test pattern, a display made to aid in calibrating black-and-white television broadcasts. Among many other more abstract visual elements, it featured an engraving of a stereotypical head of a Native American head with an elaborate feather headdress; the variety of different shades of gray in the image were used to check brightness and contrast. Orange makes another simile to compare those older, decapitated Indian heads with the one regularly broadcast in the test pattern. In both cases, the head is widely advertised to large numbers of people, showing that Indigenous people are reduced to symbols under American power. This simile extends into an image comparing the "airwaves" to the ocean, and then suggests that the Indian heads are like the flag on a ship's bow on those waves. As Orange shows through these similes, throughout American history, Indian heads have been displayed as an American symbol of dominance and oppression.
Related Themes:
Part I: Tony Loneman (1)
Explanation and Analysis—Like Bugs:
In the first chapter of the novel, Tony and Maxine read together before going to bed. Tony struggles with this due to his dyslexia. He describes his difficulties with reading using a simile:
Maxine makes me read to her before she goes to sleep. I don’t like it because I read slow. The letters move on me sometimes, like bugs. Just whenever they want, they switch places. But then sometimes the words don’t move. When they stay still like that, I have to wait to be sure they’re not gonna move, so it ends up taking longer for me to read them than the ones I can put back together after they scramble.
The letters skitter around "like bugs." This very brief, evocative, and even gross simile is typical of Orange's style, especially in Tony's chapters. Note that the letters can move "whenever they want," which interestingly contrasts Tony's frustration earlier in the chapter that he cannot move away from Oakland. As a result of his dyslexia, the letters have more freedom than Tony does.
As a result of the moving letters, Tony does not enjoy reading, preferring to find meaning in his own life through the music of MF Doom. Tony does, however, want to learn more about his culture. Despite his desire to connect with his heritage, here we see another barrier outside of Tony's control that prevents him from gaining a deep understanding of his Nativeness.
Related Themes:
Part I: Edwin Black (1)
Explanation and Analysis—Figure Out a Brain:
Edwin Black is a well-educated man who is addicted to the internet and lives in his mother's basement. Early in the first chapter from his perspective in Part I, he describes how he gets "obsessed" with certain ideas and researches them incessantly. In this passage he tells about his obsessive research into the brain, in addition to how the internet has changed people's brains. He uses an evocative simile to make his point:
Lately I’ve become a little obsessed with the brain. With trying to find explanations for everything as it relates to the brain and its parts. There’s almost too much information out there. The internet is like a brain trying to figure out a brain. I depend on the internet for recall now. There’s no reason to remember when it’s always just right there, like the way everyone used to know phone numbers by heart and now can’t even remember their own. Remembering itself is becoming old-fashioned.
The simile in this passage argues that the internet is like another, very powerful kind of brain: "like a brain trying to figure out a brain." The internet makes even "remembering itself" obsolete, because all information is available. In Tony's case, this is a problem, because he has become overly dependent on the internet, spending all his time reading and doing little else. This also connects to a larger problem in the novel, that remembering "the Native story" is especially difficult. Orange shows that the internet is connected to this problem, and that people are less connected to their heritage when they no longer have to remember it actively. Edwin's simile emphasizes that the internet actively alters brains, with serious consequences.
Related Themes:
Part II: Calvin Johnson (1)
Explanation and Analysis—Ax to Grind:
Early in Part II, Calvin describes his sister and mother, who both have bipolar disorder, with a simile about axes in a forest. The simile is intentionally convoluted to represent the difficulty and uncertainty of life with a serious mental disorder:
Being bipolar is like having an ax to grind with an ax you need to split the wood to keep you warm in a cold dark forest you only might eventually realize you’ll never make your way out of. That’s the way Maggie put it. She got it like me and my brother didn’t. But she’s medicated. Managed. Maggie, she’s like the key to the history of our lives. Me and my brother, Charles, we hate and love her like you end up feeling about anyone nearest to you who’s got it.
Calvin's extensive simile seems to mean that, for people with bipolar disorder, the brain seems to turn against itself, even while the brain is the only tool that could get them out of their problems. In other words, the brain is the ax you need to keep you warm, but it is no longer sharp enough to cut wood. As a result, life's problems can feel inescapable, like being stuck in a cold dark forest.
There is another, smaller simile later in this passage about Calvin's sister: "Maggie, she's like the key to the history of our lives." Maggie's bipolar disorder is more severe than Calvin's or his mother's, but she is on medication. Her experience shows what life could be like if medication were more available for the whole family, making her like a key to a locked-away possibility.
Related Themes:
Part II: Interlude
Explanation and Analysis—Stray Bullet:
In the Interlude, the narrator describes how shootings can happen anywhere. No one expected a calamitous event to happen at the powwow, but shootings are random, terrible events. Orange uses some violent imagery, followed by a simile, to describe a bullet in such a shooting:
A bullet is a thing so fast it’s hot and so hot it’s mean and so straight it moves clean through a body, makes a hole, tears, burns, exits, goes on, hungry, or it remains, cools, lodges, poisons. When a bullet opens you up, blood pours like out of a mouth too full. A stray bullet, like a stray dog, might up and bite anyone anywhere, just because its teeth were made to bite, made to soften, tear through meat, a bullet is made to eat through as much as it can.
The passage above begins with terrible imagery of a bullet tearing through a body. The description endows the bullet with an unexpected amount of agency. Orange uses many active verbs associated with the bullet: it "burns, exits, goes on," etc. These verbs depict the bullet as an active being making choices, which adds energy to the imagery of the bullet. This imagery emphasizes the physical consequences of mass shootings in evocative fashion.
The simile later in the passage compares a stray bullet to a stray dog. This emphasizes the fact that shootings can happen at any time, as random events, arriving like a stray animal. This also serves to emphasize the active choice that Orange ascribes to the bullet, comparing it to an animal with teeth made to "tear through meat."
