“She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd.” (simile)
Mitty feels literally defamiliarized from his wife when her admonitions jerk him out of his fantasy of being a hydroplane commander. For a moment, she is less real than his daydream.
"The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking." (simile)
In the first of Mitty's fantasies, his persona is described with a vivid simile that lends the character an aura of gruff masculinity.
"War thundered and whined around the dugout" (metaphor)
In Mitty's World War I fantasy, he and the sergeant experience the war like the natural phenomenon of a thunderstorm; of course, it is in actuality artillery shelling.
"It's forty kilometers through hell" (metaphor)
In Mitty's World War I fantasy, the sergeant describes the bombing flight Captain Mitty is about to undertake as an extremely dangerous and arduous journey, also playing on evocations of hellfire.
"The remote, intimate airways of the mind" (metaphor)
Even after his first fantasy is dispelled by his wife's admonishing him to slow down his driving, Mitty continues to fantasize in the deeper recesses of his imagination.
