Simile: Mask
Townsman Amos Ames comments of Lavinia, "Secret lookin'—'s if it was a mask she'd put on" (230). This simile gets to the heart of what makes Lavinia and all the Mannons so disturbing—they do not seem like real people. They don "masks" and cover up their emotions and traumas and crimes.
Simile: Lavinia as a guard
Christine sneers to Ezra that Lavinia was "pacing up and down before the house like a sentry guarding you" (274). She makes this comparison of Lavinia to a guard to insinuate to Ezra that Lavinia cares too much for him, that she is obsessed with him, that she is actively trying to undermine the husband-and-wife relationship with her meddling. The term "sentinel" is appropriate given Lavinia's black garb, stiff posture, and masked visage.
Simile: Lavinia as an icicle
A townswoman, Mrs. Borden, says of Lavinia that "[she] is cold and calm as an icicle" (282). Just as she was described as masked and like a sentinel, Lavinia is described as an icicle. This implies that she cares little for others, that she is unaffected by things, that she is removed from everyone else.
Metaphor: Christine as Island
Orin rhapsodizes to Christine about the Islands he read about and tells her "the breaking of the waves was your voice. The sky was the same color as your eyes. The warm sand was like your skin. The whole island was you" (300). In this metaphor of Christine as Island, Orin conveys just how much (and how inappropriately) he loves his mother and how he associates her with a warm, womblike, beautiful, and sensuous place. It emphasizes these aspects of Christine's looks and disposition and how Orin sees a refuge in her—a refuge that he believes Brant cruelly takes away from him
Metaphor: Light
Orin tells Lavinia feverishly that "I find artificial light more appropriate for my work—man's light, not God's—man's feeble striving to understand himself, to exist for himself in the darkness!" (352.) He is using the metaphor of light as in a lamp to explain how he currently feels about his existence. Specifically, he is in "darkness" and is spiritually lost due to Christine's suicide and his sister's behavior, and needs "light" to come back to himself and find redemption.
