The simile of the painful silence
Tawanda compares the events that followed after the death of her brother to that of Freddie Gray. Tawanda recalls how few people turned up when her brother died. However, things have changed now, and Freddie's death has attracted very many people because the rate at which police are brutalizing and killing the black men is alarming. The people are ready to protest and demand justice. Tawanda says, "Of course, there were reasons Freddie’s death was different, that it so quickly turned onto a galvanizing moment instead of passing into a painful silence like Tyrone’s.” People are fed up with police cruelty because the events of Freddie’s brutalizing were caught on camera and every black person is annoyed.
The Simile of John
The author compares John’s passion to his father when he writes, “After graduating from the Gilman School, arguably Baltimore’s most prestigious independent school, and then Duke University, he went on to law school at the University of Baltimore, like his father.”
The Simile of Marc Ahmal Partee
Junior Marc is compared to his father in terms of physique. The author vividly describes the look-alike features of the father and son when he writes, “His son Marc Ahmal Partee was a seventeen-year-old powerlifter who looked like a younger version of his father, barrel-chested and thick, a presence so imposing you might miss the goofily disarming smile.”
The metaphor of the Inner Harbor
The Inner Harbor is metaphorically used to mean the more privileged in society. In Baltimore, there are two sets of social classes, those of the black skin and those of the white skin. Most whites reside in the vibrant Inner Harbor, which is booming with economic activities. Most people living in the Inner Harbor are protected by the Baltimore Police Department. However, those living in West Baltimore are mostly Black Americans, and they are not accorded equal treatment. For instance, most of the black men from West Baltimore suffer from police brutality. The life expectance in West Baltimore is twenty years less when compared to the Inner Harbor.
The Simile of the Crowd Protesters
The author compares the protesters' emotions to trouble when they decided to march to Baltimore's center of power. Led by Tawanda, the protesters thought that they were being treated as lesser beings, and they intended to make their voice to be heard, which could be achieved if they marched to the Inner Harbor. However, they were provoking trouble, and the author compares their emotions to risk when he writes, "And bringing this crowd of protesters – their emotions increasingly inflamed as they moved closer to Baltimore’s power center – felt like trouble.”
