Unit 2 · Topic 2.5

2.5 Similes: comparing with "like" or "as"

A simile compares two different things using "like" or "as." The thing being described is the main subject; the thing it's compared to is the comparison subject. Analyzing a simile means figuring out which qualities move from one to the other, and why the writer wants you to see them.

Key terms

simile
figurative language
main subject
comparison subject
comparison

The two parts of a simile

"Her voice was like a door slamming." The main subject is her voice. The comparison subject is a door slamming. The simile asks you to borrow qualities from the door (sudden, loud, final, angry) and apply them to the voice.

AP Lit uses the terms main subject and comparison subject. You might also hear "tenor" (the main subject) and "vehicle" (the comparison subject). Either pair works, as long as you're clear.

Which qualities transfer?

Not every quality moves across. A slamming door is made of wood, but nobody thinks her voice is wooden. Your job is to figure out which traits the context activates. Ask:

What do people usually associate with the comparison subject?
Which of those associations fit the main subject in this moment?
What tone does the comparison carry: admiring, mocking, frightening, tender?
Why this comparison and not a more ordinary one?

Similes reveal the person making them

When a character or speaker makes a comparison, it reveals how they see the world. A character who describes a city "like a hungry animal" is afraid of it or excited by it, and the comparison tells you which. Similes can also reveal something true about the thing compared, so read them both ways.

Unexpected similes

The most interesting similes link things that seem far apart. The distance makes you work harder, and the effort is part of the effect. When a simile surprises you, explain the surprise: what the unlikely comparison brings out that an ordinary description couldn't.

Is it really a simile?

Not every "like" or "as" makes a simile. A simile compares two things of different kinds. "My brother is tall like my dad" compares two people, so it's a literal comparison, not a simile. "My brother is tall like a lamppost" is a simile, because a person and a lamppost are different kinds of things.

Also watch for similes that run longer than one phrase. A writer might say something is "like" a storm and then keep adding details for two or three lines. When that happens, follow every added detail; each one sharpens which qualities transfer. (When a comparison keeps going across much of a poem, it becomes an extended metaphor, covered in 5.5.)

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
A simile that refuses an image
Claude McKay's sonnet "If We Must Die" was first published in 1919, a year of violent attacks on Black communities in many US cities, and collected in Harlem Shadows (1922). It begins: "If we must die, let it not be like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, / While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, / Making their mock at our accursèd lot" (lines 1–4). Near the end: "Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack" (line 13). Explain how the similes develop the speaker's argument.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Find the first simile and its parts. The main subject is how "we" might die; the comparison subject is "hogs / Hunted and penned."
2. Step 2: Ask what transfers. Hogs are trapped, helpless and killed without honor, in an "inglorious spot." The speaker refuses this image ("let it not be").
3. Step 3: Find the answering comparison. In line 13, "Like men" replaces "like hogs," and the attackers have become a "cowardly pack," like the "dogs" of line 3.
4. Step 4: Explain the argument: the poem moves from a rejected animal simile to the speakers' claim to act "Like men," that is, as the full human beings the hog image denied they were. They go from victims to people who fight back with dignity.
Answer: Model paragraph: McKay builds his call to resistance by rejecting one simile and replacing it with another. The speaker refuses to die "like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot," a comparison that captures the helplessness and dishonor of being trapped and slaughtered. By opening with "let it not be," the poem turns the simile into something to fight against. In line 13 the comparison changes: "Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack." Now the speakers are men, and their attackers have become the animals, a "pack" of the "mad and hungry dogs" from line 3. The reversal of the comparisons shows the poem's central claim: dignity comes not from avoiding death but from choosing how to meet it.

Common mistakes

Just identifying a simile ("this is a simile because it uses like"). That's not analysis; explain what the comparison does.
Assuming every quality of the comparison subject transfers. Pick the ones the context supports.
Mixing up which part is the main subject and which is the comparison subject. The main subject is the thing actually being described.

On the exam

Questions often ask what a simile "emphasizes" or "suggests" about the main subject. The right answer names a specific quality, not just "a comparison."
In essays, explaining why a writer chose a surprising comparison is a quick way to show depth.

Connected topics

Videos

"What is a Simile?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Figurative language | Reading | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Metaphor vs Simile | Understanding Figures of Speech
2 Minute ClassroomWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
"What are Vehicles and Tenors?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 2.5 Similes: comparing with "like" or "as". Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29, from Shake-speares Sonnets (1609). “bootless”: useless. “Haply”: by chance.

Question 1 of 4

In lines 10–12, the speaker compares his “state” to the lark “at break of day arising.” The comparison chiefly suggests

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” from Poems (1920). The Latin in lines 27–28, from the Roman poet Horace, means “It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.”

Question 2 of 4

The similes in lines 1–2 (“like old beggars under sacks” and “coughing like hags”) chiefly emphasize that the soldiers are

Question 3 of 4

In lines 13–14, the speaker sees the gassed soldier “As under a green sea.” This simile mainly conveys

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.