Simile - Frankenstein

"She sang, and her voice flows in a rich cadence, swelling or dying away, like a nightingale of the woods," (83).

This simile is used by the creation to describe Safie's singing voice. He had never heard a human sing and was amazed at the beauty of it. I liked reading about the creation's first experiences. It was interesting thinking about what it would be like to not have any words or ability to describe what was going on. When we all learned about this kind of stuff, we were too young to remember what it was like. But for the creation, he was very aware that he was different and had no idea what was going on. I cannot imagine how difficult that would be and how lost one would feel in that situation. This creation was lucky that he had a superhuman mind and was able to catch on quickly! Otherwise it would have been terribly difficult to catch on.

Simile in "Getting Out"

Question 11: Point out examples of figurative language and explain.

The simile is contained in lines 1-2 reading, "That year we hardly slept, waking like inmates who beat on the walls." The speaker is referring to a spouse and herself. Comparing a couple to inmates seems to be an inappropriate comparison. Inmates do not experience intimacy like a married couple can. However, in this situation inmates was a qualified comparison in that the couple were unhappy together which led to the divorce. They had nothing in common except for their "matching eyes and hair," (line 16). This suggests that the relationship was merely superficial and lacked any real emotional connection which is why the marriage failed. The divorce seemed mutual as the speaker never spoke negatively of the husband and they took hands to exit the lawyer's office who was approving the divorce as stated in the concluding lines of the poem.

3. Simile

In the third section, O'Brien again describes memories from the war. On page 31, he uses a simile to help him explain what some parts of war are like. "On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance." I am not completely sure what O'Brien meant, but I believe that this simile is his way of saying that the war was not entirely bad. He found ways to make it a more positive experience than a negative one. Later in the chapter, however, he resumes talk of the negative experiences. As he says, "The thing about remembering is that you don't forget," (33). As he shares more positive experiences, he always leads back to the negative because he cannot ever forget no matter how much he may wish to do so. No matter how many good things happened, the bad will still always be a huge part of who O'Brien is.