Previous
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
Manuscript Found in a Bottle
Explanation and Analysis—Ponder Upon my Destiny:
The narrator’s final entry in “Manuscript Found in a Bottle” is full of vivid imagery and situational irony:
Oh, horror upon horror!—the ice opens suddenly to the right, and to the left, and we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, round and round the borders of a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness and the distance. But little time will be left me to ponder upon my destiny! The circles rapidly grow small—we are plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool—and amid a roaring, and bellowing, and thundering of ocean and of tempest, the ship is quivering—oh God! and—going down!
Related Themes:
Ligeia
Explanation and Analysis—Ligeia's Eyes:
The visual imagery the narrator provides of Ligeia’s eyes is extremely powerful, as in the passage below:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals – in moments of intense excitement – that this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia.”
Related Themes:
The Fall of the House of Usher
Explanation and Analysis—The Fall of the House:
The visual imagery at play in the concluding moments of “The Fall of the House of Usher” is striking and terrifying:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “House of Usher.”
Related Themes:
The Tell-Tale Heart
Explanation and Analysis—The Beating of a Drum:
“The Tell-Tale Heart” is full of auditory imagery. Sound—imagined and real—plays a large role in translating the paranoia of the narrator to the reader. Take the passage below, for example:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
Related Themes:
The Pit and the Pendulum
Explanation and Analysis—I Was Half Stifled:
One of the stylistic elements Poe employs most brilliantly in “The Pit and the Pendulum” is his use of imagery to build an utterly overwhelming sense of being trapped. The moment in which the narrator allows himself to be rushed by the rats provides a perfect, visceral example:
Unlock with LitCharts A+This seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood—they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes they busied themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed—they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy clamminess, my heart. Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle would be over.
Related Themes:
