Describe figurative language.

Figurative language enhances the text.... it makes things more interesting.

Similes:

The electric thimble moved like a praying mantis on the pillow, touched by her hand.

Her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall.

A book alighted, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering.

Metaphor:

He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house.

With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world.

A fountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stair-well.

Personification:

Out of the black wall before him, a whisper. A shape. In the shape, two eyes. The night looking at him. The forest, seeing him.

He smelled the heavy musk-like perfume mingled with blood and the gummed exhalation of the animal's breath, all cardamom and moss and ragweed odor in this huge night where the trees ran at him, pulled away, ran, pulled away, to the pulse of the heart behind his eyes.

Allusion:

"I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus."

"It's fine work. Monday bum Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then bum the ashes. That's our official slogan."