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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
Key Examples in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Part One
Explanation and Analysis—Dam Breaking:
In Part One, McMurphy's arrival begins to incite an attitude of rebellion in the patients, including Bromden, who have long accepted their place at the bottom of the hierarchy on the ward. Bromden lies in bed unmedicated for the first night in years, and he describes the sound of the ward with imagery that foreshadows major changes to come:
Not a sound across the hospital—except for a dull, padded rumbling somewhere deep in the guts of the building, a sound that I never noticed before—a lot like the sound you hear when you’re standing late at night on top of a big hydroelectric dam. Low, relentless, brute power.
Related Themes:
Part Two
Explanation and Analysis—Whir of Fear:
In Part Two, Bromden's fog lifts enough that he is able to look out the window and see the countryside at night for the first time in years. He uses imagery to contrast what he observes outside with his experience inside the hospital:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I held my breath and I could hear the flap of his big paws on the grass as he loped; then I could hear a car speed up out of a turn. The headlights loomed over the rise and peered ahead down the highway. [...]
The dog was almost to the rail fence at the edge of the grounds when I felt somebody slip up behind me. [...] I heard a whir of fear start up in my head. The black boy took my arm and pulled me around. “I’ll get ‘im,” he says.
Related Themes:
Part Four
Explanation and Analysis—McMurphy's Surrender:
In Part Four, after McMurphy rips Nurse Ratched's uniform, he lets out a cry of surrender. Bromden uses imagery to describe the sound McMurphy makes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He gave a cry. At the last, falling backward, his face appearing to us for a second upside down before he was smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out:
A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn’t care any more about anything but himself and his dying.
Related Themes:
