Comparison

Bringing two different things together with an explicit word, such as "like," "just as," or "seems." Unlike metaphor, comparison makes clear that there are two things.

In Demons

His hair was too black, his clear eyes too calm and too limpid, his complexion too delicate and too white, his vivid, pure flush too much, teeth like pearls, lips like coral: he looked like a beauty in a painting and, at the same time, somehow repulsive. People said his face resembled a mask.

His teeth "like pearls" and his lips "like coral" trade flesh for jewels, hard and polished things. The comparison prepares the close, in which the whole face comes to resemble a mask.

Part One: The Father of the Demons, the chronicler, on Nikolai Stavrogin

When I saw your face lowered, the moment I fell and you caught me, it was as if a worm had gone into my heart: it is not him, I thought, it is not him! My falcon would never be ashamed of me before a society lady!

Part Two: The Night of the Creditors, Marya Timofeyevna

They felt that they had suddenly fallen, like flies, into the web of an enormous spider; they were angry, but they trembled with fear.

Part Three: The Last Decision, the chronicler, on the quintet

I know I should kill myself, sweep myself from the earth like a vile insect; but I am afraid of suicide, because I fear showing magnanimity. I know that this would still be a deception, the last deception.

Part Three: The Last Wandering, Stavrogin, in a letter to Darya Pavlovna