Figurative language is the usage of figures of speech in order to make a literary piece more effective and impactful for readers. Figurative language includes a really wide range of literary devices. Simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, personification, hyperbole, and alliteration are all examples of figurative language. The second paragraph has a really great simile that helps readers picture the conductor of the musicians that are playing.
He scraped with his foot and flapped his arms like a rooster about to
crow, and the bandsmen sitting in the green rotunda blew out their cheeks and glared at the music.
I think an important simile occurs about halfway through story.
It was like a play. It was exactly like a play.
This simile shows readers a key insight into Miss Brill herself. She loves going to the park, and this simile helps us understand how she views herself...
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and the people around her. She sees everybody as a piece in a larger production, and she sees herself as an integral part of that play. It's a cute and innocent thought on her part, but she is devastated to learn that not all of the people in her "play" see her as essential as she sees herself.
Katherine Mansfield seems to use a great deal of figurative language early in the story to clue readers in to Miss Brill's highly developed imagination and the fantastical world she has created of reality.
In the initial simile, the narrator describes "the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques." This simile compares the brilliantly bright sky to a spill of white wine. It lends a sort of elegant air to the opening of the story, fitting given Miss Brill's initial opinion of herself and her life.
Another simile in the first paragraph describes the feel of the air; there was "just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip." This simile compares the slight coldness in the air to the cool one feels just before sipping ice water. This is not an entirely welcome sensation. "Chills" are usually not good things.
Then, the fox fur is personified as having "sad little eyes" and asking "'What has been happening to me?'" And when Mill Brill sees the conductor at the park, he "scraped with his foot and flapped his arms like a rooster about to crow," another simile, and the narrator compares the musical notes to "a little chain of bright drops," a metaphor.
Mill Brill is quite good at creating these fantasies in her mind, and they seem to prevent her from realizing that she is as average as everyone else at the park.