Angie Bonali’s husband
Angie Bonali gazes past her lover’s dark head, the writer brings out its form through the use of a simile that enhances its imagery. The burs and ridges on it are directly likened to those of a goat to enhance the reader’s visualization of the same. The writer notes: “she gazed up past his dark head, burred and ridged like a goat’s, to the tattered roof of the old car.”
Darkness personified
Through personification and the employment of a simile, the greedy, voracious, and acquisitive effect of the darkness, hot and rubbery on Mike’s back is brought out. The writer notes that: “darkness, hot, rubbery, breathed like a ravening mouth on Mike’s back.” In a way, the simile also enhances imagery.
The panting of the running women
The tired and beaten state of the women running is enhanced via a simile. In particular, the panting of the women as a result of their running is compared to the panting of horses, a language use methodology that builds imagery: “Then two women ran past them, panting like horses.”
Lee Craven’s voice
The softness of Lee Craven’s voice is likened to the gentle and lulling nature of a girl’s voice. Another simile makes explicit, the nature of Craven’s voice, how he inserts nasal a’s and dragging them “like a fluttery shield against the tons of black earth above their heads.”
The crumbling of body hair on being touched “like cigarette ash”
It remains as something of a shock for Tiger Miller how “body hair, hairs in the crotch, in the armpits, are all carbonized, but stand rigid.” He had expected that the hairs would at least crumble like ash from a cigarette: “He supposed they would crumble like cigarette ash if you touched them.” The use of this simile enhances imagery of the expected crumble of body hair under a touch.
