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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
Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Flowers and Suits:
Steinbeck uses Elisa's dynamic with her husband Henry to embody Elisa's fraught relationship with her gender. He uses the following imagery to introduce the couple:
Elisa Allen, working in her flower garden, looked down across the yard and saw Henry, her husband, talking to two men in business suits. The three of them stood by the tractor shed, each man with one foot on the side of the little Fordson. They smoked cigarettes and studied the machine as they talked.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—A Man's Black Hat:
When Steinbeck first introduces Elisa, he uses imagery to describe her as having a number of traditionally masculine qualities, from the clothing she wears to her "lean and strong" features:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was thirty-five. Her face was lean and strong and her eyes were as clear as water. Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man’s black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clodhopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pockets to hold the snips, the trowel and scratcher, the seeds and the knife she worked with. She wore heavy leather gloves to protect her hands while she worked.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Hot, Sharp, and Lovely:
While talking to the tinker (and trying to seduce him), Elisa uses poetic imagery to describe living on the road as he does:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Elisa’s voice grew husky. She broke in on him, "I’ve never lived as you do, but I know what you mean. When the night is dark—why, the stars are sharp-pointed, and there’s quiet. Why, you rise up and up! Every pointed star gets driven into your body. It’s like that. Hot and sharp and—lovely."
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—A Closed Pot:
Imagery in the opening of The Chrysanthemums introduces all of the story's key themes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Uncomfortable Femininity:
After her interaction with the tinker, Elisa goes inside the house to get ready for dinner with Henry, in a passage marked by imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+After a while she began to dress, slowly. She put on her newest underclothing and her nicest stockings and the dress which was the symbol of her prettiness. She worked carefully on her hair, penciled her eyebrows and rouged her lips.
Related Themes:
