Jinx plaited hair
At the funeral, Sue Ellen describes her friend Jinx's plaited hair, directly comparing it to a plaited rope of wires using a simile. She uses this particular choice of language and stylistic device in order to enhance imagery as the reader is able to visualize the described event: "She [Jinx] had her hair tied in pigtails that stood out from her head like plaited ropes of wire."
The look in Terry's eyes
After the death of Terry's father, her mother then gets married to a man named Harold Webber. The man forces her mother to quit teaching school and any other job believing that it was a husband's wife to take care of the wife. To bring out the intensity of Terry's dislike for her stepfather, Ellen in her narration uses a simile to compare the look in Terry's eyes to a rabbit that was about to run: "Since that marriage, Terry had a look in his eyes like a rabbit that was about to run fast and far."
The flittering of the little bugs along the river
In her description of the river on their way to May Lynn's house, the narrator uses a simile in which she likens the flittering of the bugs around the water surface to dancers: "There was the usual turtles and water snakes swimming about, long-legged birds diving down to take fish out of the water, and those little bugs that flittered along the water’s surface like dancers."
The effect of May Lynn's question on Sue Ellen
Sue Ellen remembers the time when she had sat on May Lynn's mattress and the way she had asked her the question of what she wanted to do with her life. Sue Ellen brings to the reader's attention the impact of the question on her, comparing its intensity and suddenness to a rock that hit her at the back of her head.: "and then she said something to me that dove out of the air like a rock and felt like it hit me in the back of the head."
The crackling away of Sue Ellen and her friends plans of escaping
Following the Great Depression, there is a lot of anxiety. After Sue Ellen and her friend's plans of escaping initially fail, she describes the feeling of their plans dissipating and crackling to a dry paper in a fire: "No one said anything for a long while, but I’m pretty sure, like me, they could hear our plans crackling away like dry paper on fire."
