"Your face shone like the clear moon at night, / Your eyes like the stars in heaven" (Simile) (22)
Kĩgũũnda uses this simile to frame personal beauty in terms of untouched, uncolonialized, natural landscape.
"Now you look like an old basket / That has lost all shape" (Simile) (29)
Kĩgũũnda uses this simile, in contrast to the simile mentioned above, to relate loss of natural beauty to the degradation of a manmade object.
"A flower is robbed of the colours by the fruit it bears" (Metaphor) (29)
Wangeci uses flowers as a metaphor for women, who lose their liveliness through their children.
The title-deed (Metaphor)
The title-deed is a metaphor for power and autonomy. Whoever possesses it can be said to have the power. Its placement on the wall in Kĩgũũnda's hut initially signifies that he is his own man; later in the play, its replacement by Christian words shows that it is in danger of being taken from him. In the end, Kĩoi officially takes it from him and thus has the power over him (as well as, Ngugi implies, power over land itself).
"Poverty is like a poison in a body" (Simile) (42)
Gĩcaamba uses this simile to make vivid the experience of poverty by comparing it to a literal poison draining the lifeforce out of someone.
