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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
Key Examples in How the Other Half Lives
Introduction
Explanation and Analysis—Moral Contagion:
Riis goes to great lengths to depict the reality of the tenements—at least, his perception of them—to the reader through imagery and figurative language. While he succeeds in creating an empathetic image in some passages, certain others end up demonizing the very subjects Riis wishes to help. One can see this clearly in Riis's use of metaphor in the following passage from the introduction:
[The tenements are places] that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out in the last eight years around half a million beggars to prey upon our charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the family life with deadly moral contagion.
Related Themes:
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Swarms and Hordes:
Throughout the book, Riis uses animalistic, demeaning language to describe tenement residents, more often than not speaking about them as a large, threatening group as opposed to as individuals with agency and identity. This imagery of the "swarms" or "hordes" of impoverished immigrants is so widely used in Riis's work that it becomes a motif, one he employs as early as the introduction, mentioning the "question" of "how to lay hold of these teeming masses in the tenements." He also uses the term "herd" in Chapter 1 to describe crowding in cities, noting that many other overcrowded cities were far less crowded than New York:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The utmost cupidity of other lands and other days had never contrived to herd more than half [the people who lived in New York tenements] within that same space.
Related Themes:
