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Hyperbole
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
Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—The Sepulchral City:
When he first sets out on his expedition, Marlow visits the Company’s headquarters in Brussels, and he uses imagery (sight, sound, and touch) to describe the “sepulchral city”:
A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and opened the first door I came to.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—The Living Jungle:
The novella’s striking imagery of the Congo emphasizes its liveliness and motion, which contrasts with the total stagnation of European cities like London and Brussels. For instance, when Marlow first arrives in the Congo in Part 1, he observes that:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—The Thames:
The novella opens and closes with imagery of a great river—not the Congo, where most of the plot is set, but rather the Thames in London. This is where the book’s frame story takes place, as Marlow tells his tale to a group of fellow sailors. The book’s second paragraph in Part 1 sets the scene:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished spirits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
Related Themes:
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Living Jungle:
The novella’s striking imagery of the Congo emphasizes its liveliness and motion, which contrasts with the total stagnation of European cities like London and Brussels. For instance, when Marlow first arrives in the Congo in Part 1, he observes that:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.
Related Themes:
Part 3
Explanation and Analysis—Heads on Stakes:
The novella uses visual imagery to describe the heads on stakes outside Kurtz’s hut. When Marlow reaches the Inner Station, he looks out at Kurtz’s hut through his binoculars while the Russian Trader tells him that Kurtz is no longer the same man as before. He notices curious decorations on the fencepots surrounding Kurtz’s hut—and when he realizes what they are, he “throw[s his] head back as if before a blow.” The decorations are severed human heads. Marlow continues:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I returned deliberately to the first I had seen—and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids—a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—The Thames:
The novella opens and closes with imagery of a great river—not the Congo, where most of the plot is set, but rather the Thames in London. This is where the book’s frame story takes place, as Marlow tells his tale to a group of fellow sailors. The book’s second paragraph in Part 1 sets the scene:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished spirits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
Related Themes:
