Question

A simile is a figule of speech that compares two unlike

things using the word like or as. Identify a simile Mora uses in 'Teenagers"
that suggests what the speaker's grown children are like.

Answer 1

A simile compares two unlike things using 'like' or 'as.' Without the text of 'Teenagers' by Pat Mora, it's not possible to provide the specific simile requested. An example from another source illustrates the use of a simile to compare feelings to the release of a parakeet from a cage.

Step-by-step explanation:

A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the words 'like' or 'as.' This rhetorical device is often used to make descriptions more vivid and understandable. In response to the student's question regarding the poem 'Teenagers' by Pat Mora, unfortunately, without the text of the poem 'Teenagers,' it is not possible to provide a specific simile used by Mora that suggests what the speaker's grown children are like. However, an example of a simile from a different source is 'something inside me / rising explosive as my parakeet bursting / from its cage' (Bruce Snider, 'Chemistry'). This illustrates how a simile functions by using 'as' to compare an internal feeling to a parakeet bursting from its cage, both of which share the idea of a sudden release of energy or emotion.

Answer 2

Answer and Explanation:

This is the poem "Teenagers" by Pat Mora:

One day they disappear

into their rooms.

Doors and lips shut

and we become strangers

in our own home.

I pace the hall, hear whispers,

a code I knew but can't remember,

mouthed by mouths I taught to speak.

Years later the door opens.

I see faces I once held,

open as sunflowers in my hands. I see

familiar skin now stretched on long bodies

that move past me

glowing almost like pearls.

As was described in the question, a simile compares two different things with the help of "as" or "like". The purpose is to attribute a characteristic of one of those things to the other.

In the poem, the speaker is using a simile when she says, "open as sunflowers in my hands." Her children are now big, much bigger than she could have expected them to become in just a few years. It's as if she is surprised by the fact that they are no longer babies. They are grown, different, just like a flower is when it opens, when it ceases being just a bud.