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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 14: Checks
Explanation and Analysis—Swish, Click:
In the following instance of imagery from Chapter 14, Kaysen writes about how the "swishes and clicks" of "checks" by the nurses in the ward control the patients' lives:
Swish, click. Before you knew it, she'd be back. Click, swish, "Checks," swish, click.
It never stopped, even at night; it was our lullaby. It was our metronome, our pulse. It was our lives measured out in doses slightly larger than those famous coffee spoons. Soup spoons, maybe? Dented tin spoons brimming with what should have been sweet but was sour, gone off, gone by without our savoring it: our lives.
Related Themes:
Chapter 26: The Shadow of the Real
Explanation and Analysis—Tunnels:
Susanna has an obsession with the tunnels that run underneath McLean. She describes them with the following imagery, which also contains an allusion, in Chapter 26:
Unlock with LitCharts A+First their wonderful smell: They smelled of laundry, clean and hot and slightly electrified, like warmed wiring. Then their temperature: eighty at a minimum, and this when it was thirty-three outside, probably twenty-five with windchill (though in the innocent sixties, windchill, like digital time, hadn’t yet been discovered). Their quavery yellow light, their long yellow-tiled walls and barrel-vaulted ceilings, their forks and twists and roads not taken, whose yellow openings beckoned like shiny open mouths.
Related Themes:
