The poetics of Stephen Crane’s late novels” I. Introduction. II. The contribution of S. Crane to the development of American naturalism

Simile
A simile is a figure of speech where two things are directly compared using the words 'like' or 'as. A simile can generally be distinguished from a metaphor by the presence of the word ''like'' or ''as.'' For instance, the statement ''The class was like a steep mountain'' is a simile because the writer compares the class and a mountain to express that taking the class had certain features of climbing a mountain, such as being lengthy and difficult. Another example of a simile would be the statement, ''The tree stood as tall as a skyscraper.'' In this simile, the tree is compared to a skyscraper in height in order to emphasize the way it towers over the viewer.
'For example, 'When the donuts arrived, my dad popped out of his seat like a piece of toast.'
Dad's action of getting out of his seat is being compared to a piece of toast popping out of a toaster. We know a toaster shoots the toast up quickly when it has finished cooking, and therefore, the reader gets the image that the speaker's dad was excited about the donuts and jumped quickly out of his seat to get one.
The doctor was shaving this lawn as if it were a priest's chin. (2) Occasionally there came into it a shrill electric street-car, the motor singing like a cageful of grasshoppers, and possessing a great gong that clanged forth both warnings and simple noise.(8) The electric shine in the street caused an effect like water to them who looked through the glass from the yellow glamour of Reifsnyder's shop(9) They bowed and smiled and ignored and imitated until a late hour, and if they had been the occupants of the most gorgeous salon in the world they could not have been more like three monkeys.(11) He had wrenched his key from his pocket as he tore down the street, and he jumped at the spring-lock like a demon.(14) Suddenly the panes of the red window tinkled and crashed to the ground, and at other windows there suddenly reared other flames, like bloody spectres at the apertures of a haunted house. (16)
The room was like a garden in the region where might be burning flowers. Flames of violet, crimson, green, blue, orange, and purple were blooming everywhere. There was one blaze that was precisely the hue of a delicate coral. In another place was a mass that lay merely in phosphorescent inaction like a pile of emeralds. But all these marvels were to be seen dimly through clouds of heaving, turning, deadly smoke.(20-21)
Johnson had fallen with his head at the base of an old-fashioned desk. There was a row of jars upon the top of this desk. For the most part, they were silent amid this rioting, but there was one which seemed to hold a scintillant and writhing serpent. Suddenly the glass splintered, and a ruby-red snakelike thing poured its thick length out upon the top of the old desk. It coiled and hesitated, and then began to swim a languorous way down the mahogany slant. At the angle it waved its sizzling molten head to and fro over the closed eyes of the man beneath it. Then, in a moment, with a mystic impulse, it moved again, and the red snake flowed directly down into Johnson's upturned face.
Afterwards the trail of this creature seemed to reek, and amid flames and low explosions drops like red-hot jewels pattered softly down it at leisurely intervals.(21)