Broken occupants (Metaphor)
The author designates the patients at the hospital in this unpleasant way. Thus he shows that they seem for Inman to be very miserable. He is also at this hospital, and looking for them, he doesn’t want to be like them, he doesn’t want to be fated, to die there. So, the author highlights this unwillingness to obey the fate, to go to his goal no matter what happens. Inman does not want to become broken as them.
Summer like a dishrag (Simile)
Using this comparison, the author shows how difficult this summer is for Inman. He highlights the protagonist’s suffering in this way: Inman is wounded, he is at the hospital. And the summer, hot, wet and sultry, is almost unbearable for him, it is as unpleasant as a dishrag with its smell.
Heron is an exile (Metaphor)
Ada names a heron in such way, because those of them that she has seen were so lonely, that she even sympathized with them in some way. They are “exiles, no matter where they are. They seem to be always away from their home”. This metaphor helps the reader to suggest that, probably, Ada subconsciously talks about herself, about her loneliness: having found her love, she lost him; she had lived at the farm alone for a long time before Ruby came; even among close people she feels herself to be a stranger, who doesn’t have a shelter. Probably, if Inman had stayed alive, she wouldn’t have felt in this manner.
People like poultry (Simile)
The author compares wounded people, who were going to the hospital together with Inman, with poultry. Thus, the author highlights the doom and fatality of these people, but at the same time emphasizes their thirst for life (since a comparison to non-living things is avoided), that they don’t lose their hope for something better.
