Simile

Losing Battles is filled with similes, all of them fresh and inventive, some wildly unexpected. The following all appear on a single page:

The dust Uncle Homer had made still rolled the
length of the home road, like a full red cotton shirt-
sleeve.
The farm was as parched now as an old clay bell of
wasp nest packed up against the barn rafters.
Heat, like the oldest hand, seized Jack and Gloria by
the scruff of the neck and kept hold.
They marched through the cornfield, all husks,
robbed of color by drought as if by moonlight.

This frequency is not uncommon.

Welty's similes give the narrative a rich texture by piling image upon image. The images are unified in that all portray the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations of life in the rural South at a particular time. This heaping-up of images has the effect...