Previous
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
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—New York City:
New York City becomes the novel's central symbol of American life, wealth, and culture. It is also the nexus of the Jazz Age as it attracts socialites, artists, and musicians. Fitzgerald uses tactile, visual, and auditory imagery to emphasize the city's importance to the story. For instance, Chapter 2 begins with a description of the fall in New York:
Crispness folded down upon New York a month later, bringing [...] a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony’s mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness [...] there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city’s shoes [...]
Related Themes:
Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Parties:
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote some of the most famous party scenes in American literature. In The Beautiful and Damned, he uses opulent visual imagery to convey the extravagance of high-society New York parties. In Chapter 3, Gloria invites everyone to a party to drink and dance:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Then the champagne—and the party assumed more amusing proportions. The men, except Richard Caramel, drank freely; Gloria and Muriel sipped a glass apiece; Rachael Jerryl took none. They sat out the waltzes but danced to everything else—all except Gloria, who seemed to tire after a while and preferred to sit smoking at the table, her eyes now lazy, now eager, according to whether she listened to Bloeckman or watched a pretty woman among the dancers.
Related Themes:
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—New York City:
New York City becomes the novel's central symbol of American life, wealth, and culture. It is also the nexus of the Jazz Age as it attracts socialites, artists, and musicians. Fitzgerald uses tactile, visual, and auditory imagery to emphasize the city's importance to the story. For instance, Chapter 2 begins with a description of the fall in New York:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Crispness folded down upon New York a month later, bringing [...] a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony’s mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness [...] there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city’s shoes [...]
Related Themes:
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Travel:
Fitzgerald uses visual imagery to romanticize the trips that Anthony and Gloria take just before they run out of money. In Chapter 5, Anthony and Gloria spend the spring in California and the summer in Marietta. The following description of their travels brims with luxurious visual imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Through a golden enervating spring they had loitered, restive and lazily extravagant, along the California coast, joining other parties intermittently and drifting from Pasadena to Coronado, from Coronado to Santa Barbara, with no purpose more apparent than Gloria’s desire to dance by different music or catch some infinitesimal variant among the changing colors of the sea. Out of the Pacific there rose to greet them savage rocklands and equally barbaric hostelries built that at tea-time one might drowse into a languid wicker bazaar glorified by the polo costumes of Southhampton and Lake Forest and Newport and Palm Beach.
Related Themes:
