In this next exercise I have been given an extract and am to try and spot the imagery, (simile and metaphor) within it.

The course manual gives me the following definitions to work from;

• Similie – A figure of speech in which an image is evoked by likening one thing to another.
• Metaphor – To describe something by giving it the identity of something else.

“When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table

Let us go, through certain half deserted street,

The muttering retreats,

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells”

(The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot)

The last line has me a little confused about whether it is supposed to be a metaphor or a similie or if it is just a plain description. I’ve eaten in a lot of weird places so I’m choosing to take it as a descriptive line.