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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—Arnold’s Mask:
After speaking to Arnold for a few minutes, Connie starts to observe him more closely and realizes that he is not as young or as innocuous as he initially seemed. In the following passage, the narrator, channeling Connie, uses a simile and a metaphor to capture the unsettling mask-like nature of Arnold’s face:
Then he began to smile again. She watched this smile come, awkward as if he were smiling from inside a mask. His whole face was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had plastered make-up on his face but had forgotten about his throat.
At the beginning of this passage, the narrator uses a simile when capturing Connie’s realization that Arnold appears “as if he were smiling from inside a mask.” This unsettling description helps readers to picture the way that Arnold is putting on a falsely chipper façade. Immediately after this line, the language shifts from a simile to a metaphor as the narrator notes how Connie suddenly recognizes that Arnold’s “whole face was a mask.” This is her way of communicating that Arnold’s face is “plastered” in makeup, likely a maneuver to make him seem younger and more attractive to the teenage girls he targets.
This combination of simile and metaphor conveys to readers that Arnold is not the gregarious and well-meaning young man Connie initially believes him to be, but a manipulative and threatening older man.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Arnold’s Final Threats:
Near the end of the story, after psychologically tormenting Connie from outside of her house for a significant period of time, Arnold starts to threaten her more directly. He does so in the following passage, using a metaphor in the process:
Arnold Friend said, in a gentle-loud voice that was like a stage voice, “The place where you came from ain’t there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are now—inside your daddy's house—is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any time. You know that and always did know it. You hear me?”
Here Arnold metaphorically refers to Connie’s house as “a cardboard box [he] can knock down any time,” an attempt at making her feel like there is nowhere she can go to feel safe from him (despite the fact that her house is very much not a cardboard box he can easily crush). His follow-up statement—“You know that and always did know it”—is representative of the ways that he gaslights Connie throughout the story, planting false ideas about her in her mind as if they were the truth.
It is also worth noting that this passage opens with a simile from the narrator, who describes Arnold’s “gentle-loud voice” as being “like a stage voice.” While Arnold may act like he is all-powerful, the stage-voice-like nature of his threats communicates that this is all a performance. He does not actually have any power over Connie, he only makes her think that he does.
Related Themes:
