One of the first literary elements taught to children in English class is the simile, a comparison of two items using the words like or as. These two items must be
dissimilar in one dimension but also similar in another. The two have some common attribute/s that the writer would like to highlight. For example, cars and people are very different, right? Yet, they can both go slow or fast, can make turns, and come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
My favorite short story author, O. Henry, is quite the expert on using the simile to great advantage, though at times overdone in 21st-century terms. (These days we’re taught to choose one and make it count, not pile them on.)
Try this one on for size, from O. Henry’s story called, “The Purple Dress.”
…the landlady’s tongue clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbling in buttermilk.
This statement compares a woman’s speech to a church dasher which is a wooden tool that turns milk into buttermilk. Just in case we miss the negative connotation, O. Henry includes the adverb “sourly.” The reader concludes that this woman routinely took the information, passed it on with negative undertones, and stirred up all kinds of trouble.
I might mention that similes name the unfamiliar, the foreign, the “item of focus” first, and the familiar object second.
Unfamiliar object + like/as + familiar object
O.Henry’s sentence: landlady’s speech + like + a churn dasher
My sentence: The gher was like an igloo made of felt.
I must confess that in this day and age, not many of us have ever seen a churn dasher, but in O. Henry’s time, it would have been common.
So, effective similes could be considered the coupling of the UNFAMILIAR with the FAMILIAR.
Please study with me the examples from Andrew Peterson’s, ADORNING THE DARK, his memoir on the creative process which is crafted, creative, and genius.
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Continue Module 4, Crafting: Examples of Peterson’s Similes Part I
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