Gaby Farias
Mrs. Bosch
English 12 AP/4
23 August 2007
Literary Term #1
A simile is a figure of speech that draws a comparison between two different things, especially a phrase containing the word “like” or "as,":e.g. "as white as a “sheet.”
“Wick and cruel boy! I said. You are like a murderer-you are like a slave-driver-you are like the Roman emperors,” (pg.13).
In the novel, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte use this simile to let the reader understand the feeling of rage and anger that the main character, Jane, has towards her step-brother John Reeds. In the beginning of the novel, Jane is seen as the left-out, unimportant child in the family. It is somewhat of a different version of Disney’s Cinderella fairytale story. Except for the fact that she isn’t treated like a slave by her step-mother or her step- sisters. But her step-brother, John, is another story. He beats her, and bosses her around and treats her as if she is a slave and worth nothing. The simile is used to compare John’s brutality towards Jane, and the way he treats her. The author wants the reader to get a sense of the pain Jane is going through and what she sees in John’s character. The Roman emperors were cruel people, like Julius Ceaser, and they tortured and killed people for the fun of it. Slave-drivers from the 1800’s were just as worse. “He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tryant: a murderer,”(pg. 13). Jane has to endure many things from her step-brother, and to top it all off, no one in the house believes Jane and the things she has to overcome everyday. All in all, the author of the novel, wants the reader to make a connection from the fear that John puts in Jane’s eyes to those that the cruel Romans and murderers put in the eyes of their victims.
