“I feel I've set sail under a vast blue sky with huge white birds soaring through it.” (Metaphor)
In the first scene of the play, Irina says this to her sisters. She invokes the image of herself as being in a sailboat, off to explore the world and all its possibilities. The metaphor serves to illuminate Irina's state of mind, her optimism and her hopes for the future.
"Here you know everyone and everyone knows you, but you’re a stranger, an utter stranger.” (Metaphor)
Andrei bemoans the country life, saying that even though he knows everyone in the town, he is a stranger. While he is not literally a stranger, he uses the metaphor of being a stranger to show how alienated from the broader community he feels.
“My heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost” (Simile)
Irina uses this simile to describe to Tusenbach the fact that she is incapable of loving him. She draws a parallel between her heart and a fine piano that no one can open, elevating herself to a position above her companions, but also bemoaning how isolating this elevated position is, and how it makes her incapable of love.
"I'll be like the madman in Gogol's story...Silence...silence..." (Simile)
After confessing that she loves Vershinin, Masha reassures her sisters that she will not talk about it with anyone else, lest a scandal follow. By comparing herself to a character in a Gogol story, a man whose silence is due to his insanity, she suggests that her love for Vershinin has taken a toll on her mind.
"It's an expendable appendage, like a sixth finger" (simile)
Masha says that knowing different languages in their town is an "expendable appendage," a simile used to demonstrate how education and worldliness are not valued in their tiny village.
