This document provides examples of similes from the movies Forrest Gump and Shrek, as well as from the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. It defines a simile as a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using like or as. Specific similes examined include: "Life is like a box of chocolates" because you never know what you'll get; "Ogres are like onions" because they both have layers; and ways growing old can be like an onion, tree rings, or nested dolls with each year inside the next.

1. Demonstration Mini-Lesson Reading-Writing Connection: Simile

2. Forrest Gump Image Source: http://optimusfilms.20m.com/directors/rz/

3. My momma always said, “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

4. Shrek Image Source: http://www.aolcdn.com/blogs/shrek-400b0301.jpg

5. Ogres are like onions. They stink? Yes. No. Oh . . . they make you cry. No! Oh, you leave ’em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs. NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers. [sighs] Oh, you both have layers. Oh.

6. Simile: a figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared using the words “like” or “as” is/are like because is/are like because is/are like because

7. Similes from Forrest Gump and Shrek Life is like a box of chocolates because you never know what you’re going to get. Ogres are like onions because they both have layers.

8. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box.

9. Similes from “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros The way you grow old is like an onion because each year fits inside the next one The way you grow old is like the rings inside a tree trunk because . . . The way you grow old is like my little wooden dolls because . . .