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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
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Overgrown Drive:
Nature imagery is abundant in the novel, and du Maurier often combines it with personification. One striking example occurs in Chapter 1, in the narrator's dream about returning to Manderley:
Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leaned close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head [...]. And there were [...] tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth [...].
Related Themes:
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Undead Danvers:
The narrator frequently uses death-like imagery to describe Mrs. Danvers. The first instance of this motif occurs in Chapter 7, when the narrator first meets the housekeeper:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Someone advanced from the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great, hollow eyes gave her a skull’s face, parchment-white, set on a skeleton’s frame.
She came towards me, and I held out my hand, envying her for her dignity and her composure; but when she took my hand hers was limp and heavy, deathly cold, and it lay in mine like a lifeless thing.
Related Themes:
Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—Jasper's Tail:
In Chapter 20, Maxim tells the narrator about the night he murdered Rebecca. He pauses at the point where he shoots Rebecca in the heart, and the narrator interjects an evocative image that Maxim follows up with an image of his own:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I watched Jasper’s sleeping body on the carpet beside me, the little thump of his tail, now and then, upon the floor.
“I’d forgotten,” said Maxim, and his voice was slow now, tired, without expression, “that when you shot a person there was so much blood.”
Related Themes:
Chapter 27
Explanation and Analysis—Burst Abscess:
In Chapter 27, Maxim and the narrator drop Colonel Julyan off at his sister's house after they find out that Rebecca was dying of cancer. The narrator uses imagery and a simile to convey the relief of having the whole inquest over:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now that we were alone again and the strain was over, the sensation was one of almost unbearable relief. It was like the bursting of an abscess.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Fiery Horizon:
In Chapter 27, the narrator dozes on and off in the back of the car while Maxim tries to make it home to Manderley in the middle of the night. During a stop on the side of the road, the narrator uses imagery to reveal that Manderley is on fire in the distance:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“It looks almost as though the dawn was breaking over there, beyond those hills. It can’t be though, it’s too early.”
“It’s the wrong direction,” he said, “you’re looking west.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
He did not answer and I went on watching the sky. It seemed to get lighter even as I stared. Like the first red streak of sunrise. Little by little it spread across the sky. “It’s in winter you see the northern lights, isn’t it?” I said. “Not in summer?”
“That’s not the northern lights,” he said. “That’s Manderley.”
Related Themes:
