My copy of the wonderful essay "Living Like Weasels" by Annie Dillard does not make any comparisons in lines 56 to 62, so I'll mention the comparisons she makes in the lines before and after these, and then you can choose what you need.
When Dillard first meets the weasel, she describes its appearance using a number of comparisons. For instance, she says that it is "thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood." She pictures its face as "small and pointed as a lizard's" and declares that "he would have made a good arrowhead."
This description allows us to picture the weasel's appearance. However, the next comparison she makes is more astonishing and emotional, for she compares the weasel to a person that she might meet by accident in the woods. She writes:
Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut.
This anthropomorphism, or attributing of human characteristics to non-human entities, makes the emotional impact of her meeting with the weasel much more powerful. She compares the surprise of their chance encounter to a bomb exploding in their brains—something so extreme that it causes everything else in the forest and the entire world to cease. Their stare is so intense that she writes:
If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don't. We keep our skulls.
The meeting with the weasel is riddled with comparisons that paint a vibrant picture of what this animal looks like (through the narrator's eyes). The weasel is "brown as fruitwood" (which is the wood of a fruit tree), his face "small and pointed as a lizard's." Dillard even goes so far as to compare the weasel to an arrowhead.
What these comparisons do is create a vivid image in our minds of a weasel without simply stating, "the weasel was brown with a pointed face." Instead, we get a specific type of brown from a rich wood that's used in furniture building. We build the weasel out of lizard parts, first seeing the face of the reptile before putting weasel-like features onto it (fur, coat color, etc.). And then we imagine the head of an arrow—pointed on one end and a bit wider on the other—which gives us the picture of a weasel whose head may be smaller than its tail end.
Dillard's comparisons are a more creative way of telling us what the narrator saw and how they perceived the weasel. And Dillard's choice of comparisons were much more impactful than if, say, someone compared the weasel to dirt.
Line numbers may differ depending on how the essay is typeset, but at the important point where she and the weasel meet, Dillard compares him to a "muscled ribbon" and says he is as "thin as a curve," which emphasizes how slim he is. She says he is as brown in color as "fruitwood." She describes his face as "fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's" and notes he would make a "good arrowhead."
The pile-up of positive images conveys the weasel as thin, strong, and fierce. His pointed face and the idea that he would make a good arrowhead suggests the weasel has the ability to pierce through physical objects. The weasel does, at least as Dillard imagines it, metaphorically pierce into her soul. She says their eyes lock for a moment as if they are lovers and that for sixty seconds they see into each other's minds. This is a powerful experience for Dillard, who feels briefly that she has become one with the weasel and forgotten for an instant what it is to live with the human consciousness of time.
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