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Figurative language helps relay emotional meaning throughout the story, beginning with the very first sentence. Hurst writes that “summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born.” This description assigns life and death to the seasons, characterizing them as things that can live and die as humans do. The oriole’s song also “seems to die up in the leaves.” There are flowers in the graveyard, whose smell “speaks softly” the names of the family’s dead who are buried there. The story, then, begins with portraits of life and death on the property, thereby laying the groundwork for the connection the boys (and especially Doodle) have with nature. Hurst uses many types of figurative language to achieve this end; he personifies the sun as “thirsty” during the drought, and even the nickname “Doodle” expresses more about the character than his given name, conveying the young boy’s innocence and vulnerability as well as his link with the insect to which the nickname alludes, another nod to the natural world.

The narrative continues on, filled with figurative language, most notably similes that are utilized throughout. The boys’ laughter is “like a ringing bell,” suggesting the clarity of their love for one another. Their dreams of success in Doodle’s progress are “like a pot of gold,” implying that the boys’ dream may be unattainable, like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. The hurricane rips the trees from the ground “like a hawk at the entrails of a chicken”; this gives the reader a visceral idea of the storm’s violence. The dead ibis is described laying on the ground “like a broken vase of red flowers,” highlighting the bird’s fragility. Further connecting the boys and their story to nature is that the song of the oriole is “a silvery dust,” and the fact that their father’s voice seems “to rumble out of the earth itself.” These connections underly the main ideas and themes of the story—that nature is unyielding, that death is inevitable—and evoke a foreboding atmosphere, a consistent reminder that all living things err towards decay.

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