The Simile of a Blind Man’s Cane
The narrator is keen on using comparisons to help the reader relate what he is reading to what happens in reality. For instance, the narrator equates the whelks waking to that of a blind man’s cane when she says, “First it extended one long red talon of a leg, tap-tap-tapping like a blind man’s cane.” Just like a blind man is guided by his walking cane, the whelk is guided by its tap-tap sound.
The Metaphor of the Water Source
The source of in Arizona is insecure for the residents and the author uses this metaphor to enlighten the reader that the only source of water in this locality is the municipal sewage treatment. The sewage treatment is supposed to purify dirty water but it turns out that it is the main source of water for consumption. The author writes: “It had fallen asleep to the sound of the Caribbean tide and awakened on a coffee table in Tucson, Arizona, where the nearest standing water source of any real account was the municipal sewage-treatment plant”. These words are said by the narrator to address the Whelk and prepare it psychologically that in Arizona there is no freshwater.
The Metaphor of the Crabby Grace
According to the narrator, the whelk is struggling to stand at first but she did not know how crabs behave when they are around strangers. The narrator refers to it as a strange beast because she realizes that the crab was taking its time to study the environment around it. When it discovers that there is no danger, it lets out all its legs and starts to walk confidently. She says, "Then, while we watched in stunned reverence, the strange beast found its bearings and began to reveal a determined, crabby grace.” The meaning of this metaphor is that whelks only show their true colors after studying the environment to confirm their safety.
The simile of shirts and shorts
The immigrant who is trading the family richness is equated to the hemlines by the author when she says, “Spiky murexes, smooth purple moon shells, ancient-looking whelks’ sand-blasted by the tide—I tucked them in the pockets of my shirt and shorts until my lumpy, suspect hemlines gave me away, like a refugee smuggling the family fortune.” This simile is significant because it notifies the reader of the amount or quantity of the moon shells that the narrator managed to put in her pockets.
The Simile of the Yellow-striped Pinky
After arriving home, the narrator puts the carton containing the shells on the coffee table and her daughter starts to count them one by one and gives categorizes according to scientific approach like a yellow-striped picky. She writes, “With perfect delicacy she laid the shells out on the table, counting, sorting, designating scientific categories like yellow-striped pinky, Barnacle Bill’s pocketbook…Yeek!”
