Pig-like Skin (Simile)
In various places in the novel, both the Devil and white/European foreigners in Kenya are described as having skin that is red like a pig’s (as on pages 8 and 43, to name just a couple). Not only does this highlight the avarice and animalistic brutality of the colonizing powers and their cronies that destroy everyday life for the average Kenyan, but it also paints white people as being uncannily related to or close to the Devil. Especially considering Warĩĩnga's recurring dream, where the Devil's acolytes are the ones who facilitate the Devil building Hell on Earth, this is a very subtle yet purposeful move on Ngũgĩ's part.
The Body as a Sword (Simile)
While explaining that definition of good and evil is contingent on the deeds that one does in their life, Mũturi says the following to Mwaũra and the other passengers on the matatũ:
For our hands, our organs, our bodies, our energy are like a sharp sword. This sword, in the hands of a producer, can cultivate, make food grow, and can defend the cultivators so that the blessings and the fruits of their sweat is not wrested from them; and the same sword, in the hands of a parasite, can be used to destroy the crops or to deny producers the fruits of their industry. (55)
By comparing the body to a sword, something that can be seen as a tool in the right hands but a weapon in the wrong hands, Mũturi succinctly and powerfully showcases his basic idea: no person is born evil; they are just a material being with a heart to fuel them. What their heart drives them to do, then, and what they allow themselves to do, determines whether or not they are good—using their bodies and power to construct a better world for everyone—or evil—using their bodies for selfish and self-annihilating purposes.
Kenyans as Wounded Birds (Simile)
During the matatũ journey, Gatuĩria delivers his own speech and tells his own life story, including a variety of tales that the Old Man from Bahati, Nakuru told him. In between telling the second and third stories of this kind, however, Gatuĩria stops himself to say that he may not be able to tell the last story correctly, since "the kind of education bequeathed to us by the whites has clipped the wings of our abilities, leaving us limping like wounded birds" (65). Here, Gatuĩria's point is clear: the education of the colonial regime did not prioritize local customs and traditions, completely stunting the ability to recite traditional stories in the younger generation. On a deeper level, though, if one mines the sense data of this image, they see that what Gatuĩria is lamenting on a deeper level is a loss of freedom and beauty (like a bird's flight) that accompanied the removal of traditional activities and arts from Kenyans' education.
Grotesque Imagery at the Devil's Feasts (Similes)
At the Devil's Feast, Warĩĩnga and the other central characters of the text are introduced to a variety of absurd and grotesque figures, each of whom is described using a variety of similes and metaphors. For example, take how the narrator describes the emcee of the proceedings: "He had a well-fed body: his cheeks were round, like two melons; his eyes were big and red, like two plums; and his neck was huge, like the stem of a baobab tree" (94). The similes here are notably all natural images, but when re-contextualized into the realm of the human, they become uncanny, evidence of these speakers' complicity in demonic, unnatural, and evil thievery, much like the reference to white people's red, pig-like skin that we have already seen.
Trumpeting Ululations (Simile)
After Mũturi and his army of peasants storms the Golden Heights and scares away the thieves and robbers who congregated there, a series of victorious speeches are given by various group leaders. The last of these leaders is the leader of the Ilmorog workers, and when he ascends the stage, we are told that "he [...] got a big ovation, and the women's ululations were like the trumpets of war" (238). This simile not only evokes a strong sonic image, but it also reminds us that there is no turning back for the workers after this point—war has, in effect, been declared between them and the thieves who oppress them, and the consequences for both sides of the war could be fatal.
