The ship was as big as a mountain.

A simile, comparing two things using the words "like" or "as", is a tool of description. It allows the one uttering or scribing it the ability to impart a mental image to another. It is, in essence, a more poetic way of providing detail. The wordsmith could just stick with the facts; the container ship was so many feet long, but there is something about playing with words to communicate a thought that lends something to the craft of writing.

I found an interesting website that provides great examples of the use of similies. One of the examples was from Margret Atwood. She writes, “Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.” What colourful and descriptive language! It paints a thought with our own experiences that helps to enhance and elaborate details in a way nothing else could. For more of these great examples, click here.

The photo above was taken in the Strait of Georgia facing east. The mountain in the background is Mount Baker which, on a clear day, can be seen from many places in the southwestern corner of British Columbia. It doesn't look nearly as big as this though. The scene appears this way because of a principle called compression; telephoto lenses make the background appear larger than what is seen by the naked eye. As the magnification increases so does the size of the background relative to the foreground. It's as if the distance between the two were somehow shortened.

I really like the way the ship seems to be as big as the mountain in the image; it was this relationship that gave me the idea of writing on this particular form of literary device. In this case, the relationship is literal, at least from the visual perspective. That's interesting, don't you think?

Thanks for reading.     Ericspix     Eric Svendsen