Or Almost Anyone Now, Really
Similes are most effective when both ends of the comparison are understandable and accessible. When dealing with fictional characters, this may shift the balance almost completely to the end which exists in our word. This can become a point of contention as the time between the familiarity goes more distant for a greater percentage of readers:
“Somebody told me once that I looked like Amundsen, the Polar explorer. Well, Felix, too, looked like Amundsen. But it is not every person that can recall Amundsen's face.”
Exhaustion
Despair breeds exhaustion and fatigue makes it easier for despair to develop. The processes leading to the despondency of the soul is made clear as the work draws almost to a its close:
“I wrote nineteen hours at a stretch; and do you suppose I slept after that? No, I could not sleep, and my whole body strained and snapped as if I were being broken on the wheel.”
The Weird One
Similes gain power from their accessibility and recognition, as stated, but that is hardly the only fuel driving their effectiveness. Sometimes it is not the familiar which hits the mark with a reader, but the very strangeness of the lack of familiarity. In other words, a weird metaphorical image can be quite efficient itself:
“It is like diving into icy water or jumping from a burning balcony into what looks like the heart of an artichoke, and now it was particularly hard to let go.”
The Clever Connection
Another worthwhile tool for mining the hidden depths of metaphorical image is picking out two or more connected elements and stringing them together in the same sentence. The fundamental image here is the chaos expected from the circus. Notice how the writer first compares his untidy life to a clown and then immediately an additional element to heighten the theme of chaos:
“My life is all mangled and messed, but here I am clowning away, juggling with bright little descriptions”
Philosophizing
And, of course, it almost goes without saying that one the types of writing which is most perfectly suited for the power of metaphor is when a narrator begins philosophizing. All the great big issues of existence that defy logic and true understanding can be pursued through the artful dodge of comparing them to something more understandable. Of course, even this falls apart in the absence of an internal logic to the comparison being made. That’s not the case in this example:
“If I am not master of my life, not sultan of my own being, then no man's logic and no man's ecstatic fits may force me to find less silly my impossibly silly position: that of God's slave; no, not his slave even, but just a match which is aimlessly struck and then blown out by some inquisitive child, the terror of his toys.”
