Like a Sea Creature That Should Not Exist (Simile)
On the day Anders transforms from white to brown, he investigates his unfamiliar body. Hamid writes: "... and, stripping, frantic, his penis, unremarkable in size and in heft, unremarkable except in not being his, and therefore bizarre, beyond acceptance, like a sea creature that should not exist." In this simile, Hamid compares Anders's penis to an unfathomable sea creature to emphasize Anders's uncomprehending shock upon seeing his new body.
Dropping Under the Oncoming Swell (Metaphor)
After putting off telling anyone about his transformation, Anders eventually reaches out to Oona, who has just finished meditating. Hamid writes that Oona is still in a state of serenity that comes with "the sense that one has briefly crested the wave of one’s thoughts." However, the fact that Oona wants to remain above her thoughts induces a sense she is "slipping, losing [her] buoyancy, dropping under the oncoming swell." In this metaphor, Hamid illustrates the overwhelming nature of Oona's thoughts by describing those thoughts as a giant wave that threatens to drown her.
Like a Coin (Simile)
Having moved home to look after her mother's health, Oona feels that their relationship has flipped, turning Oona into the mother and her mother into the child. However, Oona realizes those designations mean less than she used to believe they did, because each word has "two sides to itself, a side of carrying and a side of being carried, each word in the end the same as the other, like a coin, differing only in the order of what face came up first on a toss." In this simile, Hamid illustrates Oona's newfound understanding of what it really means to be a parent and a child by comparing the variable roles to tossed coins, which have an equal chance of landing on either side.
Like a Carton of Milk (Simile)
While Oona is still adjusting to Anders's changed appearance, she looks at his face and thinks that his image is liable to change. However, she corrects herself in her thoughts, realizing "it was not his face but more her sense of it that reversed, from one minute to the next, more like a carton of milk that you sniffed and found had gone bad, but then tasted fine, if you took a sip a moment later." In this simile, Hamid emphasizes Oona's hesitancy with the changed version of Anders by likening her constant reassessment of him to suspecting milk is spoiled only to discover there is nothing wrong with it.
A Trapdoor Under Each of Us (Metaphor)
When discussing mortality with Anders, Oona tells him that her father's sudden death led her to worry that "there was a trapdoor under each of us, a trapdoor that could open at any second, ... and you could take a normal step but find that you had stepped into nothingness." In this metaphor, Oona emphasizes humanity's obliviousness when it comes to death by likening the unexpected loss of one's life to the floor suddenly disappearing beneath one's feet.
