Treated like beggars
Skimpy paychecks are implicated in the poor treatment of people by the welfare clerks as brought out by the narrator. In particular, the narrator uses a simile in which these treatment of people by the clerks is compared to the treatment of beggars. In this way, the same can be argued to be treatment as if the people were unworthy, reprehensible, and despicable.
The imagery of the narrator’s car “like a gun”
The minute and small nature of the narrator’s car is brought out through a simile that compares it to a gun among curbside buses, old Toyotas as well as second hand trucks. This comparison enhances imagery.
The imagery of the road “like a kindergarten drawing”
The comparison of the road to a kindergarten drawing brings out the rather unrefined state of it. The use of the simile as well as the more pronounced descriptions that follow make the imagery prevalent. The writer says that “the road looked like a kindergarten drawing of light-blue.” In this way, the road can be visualized as underdeveloped and inchoate.
Gobbling like a refugee
The girl’s eating is compared to that of a refugee or an individual who had been at sea for quite some time and was starved as such. When the writer uses the simile, “She’s gobbling like a refugee, like somebody who’s been floating at sea without food or water for weeks,” the imagery of the girl’s poor table manners as well as her famished state can be imagined.
Dumped like trash or whipped like a slave
The simile relating being dumped to being trash enables the reader understand in a deeper way, the lack of value associated with that which is being dumped while at the same time bringing out the narrator’s fear of that kind of treatment. The narrator is unsure of which fate is much worse whether it is “being dumped like trash or whipped like a slave,” even though both are not good. In a way, the comparison facilitates imagery and can be inferred as brutality as well as maltreatment, especially of people based on the context.
