Dubliners: Simile

I apologize for going AWOL. For the past few days, I've been in Montana, miles away from basic civilization, and I apologize for the blog's silence. Let us continue with another rhetorical tool: similes.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about similes. Although they can add aesthetic and descriptive power to a story, they can also be cliche, unclear, distracting, and unprofessional. Further, in their submission guidelines, national publishers like Baen Books have said of writing style, "Simple is generally better; in our opinion good style, like good breeding, never calls attention to itself."

So what makes a good simile? In my opinion, a good simile not only describes appearance, relationships, or behavior, but also establishes tone or reveals something that cannot be succinctly illustrated in cold prose. Every simile should develop a certain theme, motif, or image while establishing a clear connection between two unlike people or objects.

In short, a good simile is an effective simile. I think these examples from James Joyce's Dubliners are especially effective:

"She stood still for an instant like an angry stone image..."

"It was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at their feet."

"Simultaneously Mr. Alleyne, a little man wearing gold-rimmed glasses on a cleanshaven face, shot his head up over a pile of documents. The head itself was so pink and hairless it seemed like a large egg reposing on the papers."

Occasionally, a simile, to be effective, will need some explanation or elaboration:

"But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work."

"Polly was a slim girl of nineteen; she had light soft hair and a small full mouth. Her eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through them, had a habit of glancing upwards when she spoke with anyone, which made her look like a little perverse madonna."

A good simile, however, need not be overly artful. They can also be simple:

"He's hard up, like the rest of us."

"I admire the man personally. He's just an ordinary knockabout like you and me. He's fond of his glass of grog and he's a bit of a rake, perhaps, and he's a good sportsman."

Admittedly, this is only a small sample of what could be said of similes. Like salt, they enhance the flavor of a story if used sparingly. As the author, you ultimate decide, in the context of your own writing, what makes a simile effective.

How can you use similes more effectively in your own writing?

The Sisters: Chiaroscuro

Here's another list of rhetorical tools: http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm. Although this site is not nearly as extensive as the Silva Rhetoricae, it's more user friendly.

Today I'd like to feature a rhetorical technique that neither virtualsalt.com nor the BYU humanities department included in their compilations: chiaroscuro. Chiaroscuro is the artistic balancing of light and darkness. It's one of the most common - and in my opinion, most powerful - techniques used in literature. Here's an example from "The Sisters," the first short story in Joyce's Dubliners collection:

"There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work."

All of us inherently sense what darkness symbolizes. In this passage, darkness is closely associated with hopelessness, death, maleficence or evil, sin, and fear. Light embodies the opposite qualities; the passage above juxtaposes light with life and truth, but in any religion, light is also a common symbol of revelation, goodness, and deity.

How can chiaroscuro enhance your own writing?