Read this excerpt from the way to rainy mountain. great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the red earth, going nowhere in the plenty of time. why does the author use the simile "popping up like corn to sting the flesh" in this excerpt? to give a picture of the behavior of the grasshoppers to show the violence of nature to convey how hot the weather was to suggest a laziness in the land