Unhappiness is like the rain: it patters at first, then pours, and when you think it is over, a fresh cloud breaks above your head.
The image turns bad luck into weather you can feel on skin. It fits Edmond’s rapid slide from feast to prison—shock, then flood. The simile also prepares the novel’s rhythm: reversals arrive in waves, not once. Emotionally, readers recognize the pattern of real trouble; it never books a single appointment. The sentence slows us down to watch the storm gather. It’s not melodrama; it’s forecast. Hope will need more than an umbrella.