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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
Part 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Country Eyes:
In the first chapter of Part One, Sal meets Dean and his wife, Marylou, whom he describes with imagery and similes:
Marylou was a pretty blonde with immense ringlets of hair like a sea of golden tresses; she sat there on the edge of the couch with her hands hanging in her lap and her smoky blue country eyes fixed in a wide stare because she was in an evil gray New York pad that she'd heard about back West, and waiting like a longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman in a serious room.
Part 1, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—An Arrow:
In Part 1, Chapter 4, Sal describes hitchhiking to Denver on a truck driven by two young, cheerful farmers. His use of imagery makes the road life more vivid for the reader and establishes the carefree mood that characterizes the best moments of his journeys. He also uses a simile to describe his elation.
Unlock with LitCharts A+The road changed too: humpy in the middle, with soft shoulders and a ditch on both sides about four feet deep, so the truck bounced and teetered from one side of the road to the other [...] How that truck disposed of the Nebraska nub—the nub that sticks out over Colorado! [...] The great blazing stars came out, the far-receding sand hills got dim. I felt like an arrow that could shoot out all the way.
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Part 1, Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Denver to Frisco:
In Part 1, Chapter 11, Sal describes his journey to San Francisco with a stream of consciousness style that emphasizes the speed of his travel and the associations he has with the American cities he sees. His imagery illustrates more about the time of day and weather in the places he drives through than any specific characteristics of the cities themselves.
Unlock with LitCharts A+The bus trip from Denver to Frisco was uneventful except that my whole soul leaped to it the nearer we got to Frisco. Cheyenne again, in the afternoon this time, and then west over the range; crossing the Divide at midnight in Creston, arriving at Salt Lake City at dawn—a city of sprinklers, the least likely place for Dean to have been born; then out to Nevada in the hot sun, Reno by nightfall, its twinkling Chinese streets; then up to Sierra Nevada, pines, stars, mountain lodges signifying Friso romances [...]
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Explanation and Analysis—My American Continent:
When Sal climbs a mountain in San Francisco, toward the end of Chapter 11 of Part 1, he describes what he sees with personification, imagery, and metaphorical language.
Unlock with LitCharts A+And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhere far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded—at least that's what I thought then.
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Part 2, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Old Bull Lee:
In Chapter 6 of Part 2, Sal travels to New Orleans with Dean and Ed Dunkel to see his old friend, Bull Lee. Sal describes Bull with a metaphor, and he also relays a literary allusion Bull makes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Bull called [his son, Ray] "the Little Beast," after W. C. Fields. Bull came driving into the yard and unrolled himself from the car bone by bone, and came over wearily, wearing glasses, felt hat, shabby suit, long, lean, strange, and laconic, saying, "Why, Sal, you finally got here; let's go in the house and have a drink."
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Part 2, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—The Orgone Accumulator:
While visiting Old Bull Lee in Part 2, Chapter 7, Sal describes Bull's "orgone accumulator," which is intended to help the human body absorb "atmospheric atoms of the life principle." Kerouac uses visual imagery to describe the strange invention.
Unlock with LitCharts A+The orgone accumulator is an ordinary box big enough for a man to sit inside on a chair [...] Old Bull thought his orgone accumulator would be improved if the wood he used was as organic as possible, so he tied bushy bayou leaves and twigs to his mystical outhouse. It stood there in the hot, flat yard, an exfoliate machine clustered and bedecked with maniacal contrivances.
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Part 3, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Jazz:
In Chapter 4 of Part 3, Sal and Dean go to a jazz club. Kerouac's descriptions of jazz music are remarkably inventive, and this one is no exception. He uses similes and imagery to help the reader imagine the noise and energy of the crowd.
Unlock with LitCharts A+His tone was clear as a bell, high, pure, and blew straight in our faces from two feet away. Dean stood in front of him, oblivious to everything else in the world, with his head bowed, his hands socking in together, his whole body jumping on his heels and the sweat, always the sweat, pouring and splashing down his tormented collar to lie actually in a pool at his feet.
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Part 3, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Jazz:
In Chapter 4 of Part 3, Sal and Dean go to a jazz club. Kerouac's descriptions of jazz music are remarkably inventive, and this one is no exception. He uses similes and imagery to help the reader imagine the noise and energy of the crowd.
Unlock with LitCharts A+His tone was clear as a bell, high, pure, and blew straight in our faces from two feet away. Dean stood in front of him, oblivious to everything else in the world, with his head bowed, his hands socking in together, his whole body jumping on his heels and the sweat, always the sweat, pouring and splashing down his tormented collar to lie actually in a pool at his feet.
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Part 4, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Long Red Dusk:
In Chapter 1 of Part 4, Dean shows Sal a picture of Camille, then takes out more photos. These pictures send Sal into a reverie about the way people in the future will interpret the photos of his present. With metaphors and personification, Sal describes his reflections, first on the photographs, then upon Dean's departure.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, or actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. [...] Dean walked off into the long red dusk. Locomotives smoked and reeled above him. His shadow followed him, it aped his walk and thoughts and very being.
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Part 4, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Moon:
In Chapter 4 of Part 4, Sal describes another road trip with Dean and Stan. The three men are headed to Mexico, which means they must drive through Texas. Sal describes the sights of their drive with imagery and personification.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Across the immense plain of night lay the first Texas town, Dallhart, which I'd crossed in 1947. It lay glimmering on the dark floor of the earth, fifty miles away. The land by moonlight was all mesquite and wastes. On the horizon was the moon. She fattened, she grew huge and rusty, she mellowed and rolled, till the morning star contended and dews began to blow in our windows—and still we rolled.
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Part 4, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Monterrey:
Dean, Sal, and Stan keep driving through Mexico. In Chapter 5 of Part 4, they reach Monterrey. Sal describes this leg of the journey with imagery and a simile.
Unlock with LitCharts A+We met nobody on this high road. It wound among the clouds and took us to the great plateau on top. Across this plateau the big manufacturing town of Monterrey sent smoke to the blue skies with their enormous Gulf clouds written across the bowl of day like fleece.
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Part 4, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Shepherds:
In Chapter 6 of Part 4, Sal drives through Mexico as his friends sleep. He sees shepherds and describes them with imagery and a biblical allusion:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The shepherds appeared, dressed as in first times, in long flowing robes, the women carrying golden bundles of flax, the men staves. Under great trees on the shimmering desert the shepherds sat and convened, and the sheep moiled in the sun and raised dust beyond. "Man, man," I yelled to Dean, "wake up and see the shepherds, wake up and see the golden world that Jesus came from, with your own eyes you can tell!"
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Part 5, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Go Moan for Man:
In the only chapter of Part 5, the final part of the novel, Sal returns to the United States from Mexico. In Texas, he has a mysterious encounter, which he describes with imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] I was standing on the hot road underneath an arc-lamp with the summer moths smashing into it when I heard the sound of footsteps from the darkness beyond, and lo, a tall old man with flowing white hair came clomping by with a pack on his back, and when he saw me as he passed, he said, "Go moan for man," and clomped on back to his dark. Did this mean I should at last go on my pilgrimage on foot on the dark roads around America?
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