The pain in my body is a long moan (metaphor)
The driving force behind Xavier’s addiction to morphine is pain. Suffering from both emotional and physical scars, he turns to the drug to escape the “long moan” of pain in his harsh reality.
The rocking of the ship felt comfortable like a mother (simile)
Xavier has never felt a mother’s comfort, since his own mother abandoned him to the residential school as a child. Instead, Niska took the place of a parental figure, taking on traditional male and female roles as she cared for him and taught him to fight. As he leaves Canada and doubtlessly begins to miss Niska, the rocking of the ship reminds him of Niska.
The yellow cough of the machine guns (metaphor)
This metaphor phrases war as a sickness, bringing about poor health in the form of injury and death. The machine guns are like loud coughing, echoing through the battlefield; the word "yellow" reflects this idea of illness, bringing to mind sickened, yellowed skin. Xavier's hatred of war is echoed in his language, as negative imagery seeps through his narration.
The rumors fall like rain here (simile)
Rumors are an important force in the army, raising and lowering the men's morale as rumors of Allied successes and failures spread across the lines. There are many rumors propagated through the lines during Xavier and Elijah's time in the army; this simile reflects the fact that the rumors are as plentiful as raindrops.
I try to push the thought away, the fear that we have entered a place we've never been before, but it continues to taunt me like a mean child throwing stones from the bush along the shoreline. (simile)
Although the land along the river is familiar to Niska, her unusual circumstances make her think that she has never seen her surroundings before. This simile reflects her fear about the situation into which she has been plunged: she is afraid that Xavier will not survive, and her apprehension reflects itself in the natural landscape around her. The language here also demonstrates that her fear is cutting—it feels like stones are being thrown at her—and the simile itself is tied to the surrounding landscape by its mention of "the bush along the shoreline."
