Distracting (Metaphor)
According to Raleigh, sometimes “big words” just “stick out” and they are like “a red flag in front of a bull.” They just distract, confuse, and prevent those who come across them from understanding. The truth is that they are really useless. Why would you use a word whose meaning is unclear to the majority of people? It doesn’t mean that we have to avoid them. The thing that Raleigh tries to explain is that one should use them when a situation calls for it.
A difficult situation (Metaphor)
Hank Murrey went through hell. One of his two sons, T.G., attempted to take his own life. It would be next to impossible to imagine how shocked the boy’s family was. That tragedy was “also sure to put Nathaniel into a worse tailspin,” for his parents would definitely try to interrogate him, hoping to find out more about the reasons of T.G.’s decision to commit suicide. Not to mention that the boys’ mother had acted like she lived with “wild boars rather than her husbands and sons” even before that unfortunate event. Nobody could predict how it would influence her attitude. It could intensify her dislike even more.
Free (Metaphor)
Raleigh’s task was proofreading Jocelyn’s essays. The girl clearly didn’t like writing them and didn’t even try to put some effort into the task. Raleigh became her personal editor, for he was always ready to read them and even helped his unenthusiastic niece to improve them. However, Bettina had told him that he was “off the hook,” the man had done more than enough and it was high time Jocelyn started taking her assignments more seriously.
To make a deal (Metaphor)
Etta Rae knew almost everything about the art of making deals. The woman was smart enough to understand that people don’t like inconveniences, so before one asks another person for a favor, the first one has to do everything possible to reduce the number of inconveniences. By the time the tea was poured, she had already “sweetened the deal.” In return for a permission to use her neighbors’ backyard for a wedding ceremony of her son, she promised more than one would even dare to ask for.
Kind and respectful (Similes)
Myrtis trusted her brother Raleigh with her daughter’s well-being and knew that she could rely on his opinion. One could assume that her sister-in-law would understand Jocelyn better, but it was far from the truth. The woman “didn’t really understand young girls and therefore projected even more negatively onto them than was there.” Raleigh was a better choice. He’d been “as mystified as the next guy by women” when he was “young and dating,” but “now” he seemed to think “the mere sight of one was as lovely as seeing the first robin of spring.”
Like mother, like daughter (Simile)
Just like the majority of teenagers, Jocelyn liked to think that she was smarter than her parents and relatives. According to her, their lives were uneventful and awfully boring. The girl thought that she wouldn’t make their mistakes, that she would do better than them. However, her uncle Raleigh had a different opinion. He thought that his sister and niece shared more in common than Jocelyn thought. For instance, she could be “as difficult to talk to as Mytris.” The girl would probably disagree, but that was the truth she wasn’t ready to accept.
Dislike (Simile)
Mr. Dunkan didn’t think highly of Barbara Gullicut. His opinion solidified after she had dared to say that Elvis was “an antique.” The usually quite polite man even called her “a battle-ax,” though not in her presence. Her husband also cheated at golf and that was one more reason why he didn’t like her. Mr. Dunkan was so deeply offended by her careless words about Elvis that he started calling her a bunch of not very pleasant words in his mind. Poor Barbara had “those hippo hips” and was “as thin as my putter.”
