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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
Book 1, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Devouring Disappointment:
In the aftermath of Sir James feeling disappointed about Dorothea becoming engaged to Casaubon instead of him, Eliot uses imagery to communicate a broad lesson about disappointment:
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others.
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Book 2, Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Aroma of Rank:
When capturing Rosamond’s desire to marry Lydgate for his social status, the narrator uses imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Of course, he had a profession and was clever, as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgate was his good birth, which distinguished him from all Middlemarch admirers, and presented marriage as a Prospect of rising in rank and getting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in which she would have nothing to do with vulgar people, and perhaps at last associate with relatives quite equal to the county people who looked down on the Middlemarchers. It was part of Rosamond's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank.
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Book 4, Chapter 42
Explanation and Analysis—Absorbed and Dried:
When describing Casaubon’s relationship to his intellect, the narrator uses imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed and dried him, was really no security against wounds, least of all against those which came from Dorothea. And he had begun now to frame possibilities for the future which were somehow more embittering to him than anything his mind had dwelt on before.
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Book 5, Chapter 48
Explanation and Analysis—The Sword of Death:
As Casaubon becomes sicker, the narrator uses a metaphor to capture his imminent death:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's past - nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out of that past the lonely labour, the ambition breathing hardly under the pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs; and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him!
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Book 8, Chapter 83
Explanation and Analysis—The Thunderstorm:
During the climax of the novel—when Dorothea and Will finally declare their feelings for each other and kiss—Eliot describes the thunderstorm that accompanies the moment using imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking at the evergreens which were being tossed, and were showing the pale underside of their leaves against the blackening sky. Will never enjoyed the prospect of a storm so much: it delivered him from the necessity of going away. Leaves and little branches were hurled about, and the thunder was getting nearer. The light was more and more sombre, but there came a flash of lightning which made them start and look at each other, and then smile.
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