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Idioms
Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—The Boss Took It:
Visiting Mason City early in Chapter 1, Willie makes conversation with the locals. But one resident, Malaciah, the soda jerk at the drugstore, is hesitant to shake Willie's hand. Jack, observing from the sidelines, describes the awkward scene, using his nickname for Malaciah, "Old Leather-Face":
The Boss started toward him and put out his hand. Old Leather-Face didn't show. Maybe he shuffled one of his broken brogans on the tiles, and his Adam's apple jerked once or twice, and the eyes were watchful out of that face which resembled the seat of an old saddle left out in the weather, but when the Boss got close, his hand came up from the elbow, like it didn't belong to Old Leather-Face but was operating on its own, and the Boss took it.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Arms Pinwheeling:
During Willie's riotous speech in Upton, Tiny Duffy, his political rival, tries to come on stage and contradict him to the audience. But Willie, drunk and hungover from the previous night and in a fit of passion, pushes Duffy off the stage, and he falls in quite humorous fashion:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I don't know whether Willie meant to do it. But anyway, he did it. He didn't exactly shove Duffy off the platform. He just started Duffy doing a dance along the edge, a kind of delicate, feather-toed, bemused, slow-motion adagio accompanied by arms pinwheeling around a face which was like a surprised custard pie with a hole scooped in the middle of the meringue, and the hole was Duffy's mouth, but no sound came out of it. There wasn't a sound over that five-acre tract of sweating humanity. They just watched Duffy do his dance.
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Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Same but Different:
Visiting the man he thinks to be his father in Chapter 5, Jack observes the Scholarly Attorney attending to George, the former circus performer he has taken in. The Scholarly Attorney dotes on George, in this moment leaning over him tenderly, feeding him a piece of chocolate, and cooing at him gently. The Scholarly Attorney, while ignoring the man he believes to be his son, looks at this old, insane stranger and calls himself "Daddy." Jack is, understandably, taken aback by this. Looking at the Scholarly Attorney, Jack's imagination bursts into a flashback:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I was looking there at the old man, [...] who was holding out another morsel of chocolate and who was clucking soft, and whose own face was happy, [...] and as I looked at him I suddenly saw the man in the long white room by the sea, the same man but a different man, and the rain of the squall driving in off the sea in the early dark lashed the windowpanes where the rain ran down to thread and the night-black glass with silver [...]
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Teasing Paradox:
Chapter 7 of All the King's Men includes an extended flashback to Jack's first courtship with Anne Stanton, after he learns that she was having an affair with Willie. In his total shock and sadness, Jack sets off on a drive to California and remembers the beginning of his relationship. The flashback begins when he was 21 and Anne was 17. Jack had been friends with Adam since childhood, so he knew Anne, but here he describes seeing her on a fine summer afternoon and immediately falling in love with her:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was wearing a white linen dress, cut very straight, and the straightness of the cut and the stiffness of the linen did nothing in the world but suggest by a kind of teasing paradox the curves and softnesses sheathed by the cloth. She had her hair in a knot at the nape of her neck, and a white little ribbon around her head, and she was smiling at me with a smile that I had known all my life but which was entirely new, and saying, "Hello, Jack," while I held her strong narrow hand in mine and knew that summer had come.
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