“Losing his wife had been like a seal or a gasket cracking." (Simile)
“Wool” takes place in an industrial, post-apocalyptic setting and uses mechanical imagery to convey the characters’ emotions. In this simile, the text compares Allison’s death to the destruction of a key mechanical part in a machine, like a “seal” or a “gasket.” It expresses that, like a machine, Holston can only function properly with Allison, and her absence causes irreparable damage.
“They roamed free like the herded beasts from the picture books.” (Simile)
Holston fixates on the fantastical illustrations in picture books, the only books left in the silo. Though others believe the images represent an imagined, whimsical world, Holston secretly insists that the drawings are “truer than the scene before him.” When Holston steps onto the earth’s surface and sees blue skies and white clouds, he immediately recalls the hopeful picture books. By comparing the clouds to “herded beasts” that now roam free, this simile also explains how the silo’s leadership guarded and tamed the “true” outside world to control those living in the silo; now free from the silo, Holston feels connected to what he perceives as the natural, wild world.
"That secret was a powerful drug." (Metaphor)
When Holston sees the outside world, he feels an immediate kinship with the other cleaners who came before him. Giddy with freedom, hope, and relief, he performs the cleaning without thinking, simply because the others before him had done so. In this sense, the “secret” of the supposedly habitable outside world is like a drug in that it clouds Holston’s judgment, making him feel almost intoxicated with joy.
