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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
Part 1, Chapter 1: The Boy with a Skull
Explanation and Analysis—Big Blood Sneezes:
In the aftermath of the museum explosion, Theo regains consciousness only to find a scene of absolute gore and horror. With explicitly detailed imagery, Theo brings the reader into the fearful moment:
There were at least a dozen people on the floor—not all of them intact. They had the appearance of having been dropped from a great height. Three or four of the bodies were partially covered with firemen’s coats, feet sticking out. Others sprawled glaringly in the open, amidst explosive stains. The splashes and bursts carried a violence, like big blood sneezes, an hysterical sense of movement in the stillness. I remember particularly a middle aged lady in a blood-spattered blouse that had a pattern of Fabergé eggs on it, like a blouse she might have bought in the museum gift shop, actually. Her eyes—lined with black makeup—stared blankly at the ceiling; and her tan was obviously sprayed on since her skin had a healthy apricot glow even though the top of her head was missing.
Part 1, Chapter 2: The Anatomy Lesson
Explanation and Analysis—The Taste of Blood:
Still unwilling to accept the possibility that Audrey was killed in the museum, Theo busies himself with odd tasks. Even though many hours have passed since the explosion, Theo maintains hope and pushes aside his imagery-filled emotions and sensations:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The force of the explosion still rang deep in my bones, an inner echo of the ringing in my ears; but worse than this, I could still smell blood, taste the salt and tin of it in my mouth. (I would be smelling it for days, though I didn’t know that then.)
Part 1, Chapter 3: Park Avenue
Explanation and Analysis—Pale and Silvery:
As Theo waits for his mother to return, two social workers show up at his apartment door to take him away, at which point he realizes the gravity and truth of the situation. When they take him to the residence of his school friend Andy Barbour, Theo sees Mr. Barbour again, painting him with specific imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Mr. Barbour was a tiny bit strange-looking, with something pale and silvery about him, as if his treatments in the Connecticut “ding farm” (as he called it) had rendered him incandescent; his eyes were a queer unstable gray and his hair was pure white, which made him seem older than he was until you noticed that his face was young and pink—boyish, even. His ruddy cheeks and his long, old-fashioned nose, in combination with the prematurely white hair, gave him the amiable look of a lesser founding father.
Part 1, Chapter 4: Morphine Lollipop
Explanation and Analysis—Introduction to Hobie:
After Theo searches up Hobart and Blackwell in the yellow pages, he journeys to the West Village in search of answers. After ringing the green bell, Theo meets Welty’s business partner, Hobie, who he depicts with allusive imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He seemed to be around fifty or sixty, poorly shaven, with a shy, pleasant, large-featured face neither handsome nor plain—a man who would always be bigger than most of the other men in the room, though he also seemed unhealthy in some clammy, ill-defined way, with black-circled eyes and a pallor that made me think of the Jesuit martyrs depicted in the church murals I’d seen on our school trip to Montreal: large, capable, death-pale Europeans, staked and bound in the camps of the Hurons.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 6: Wind, Sand and Stars
Explanation and Analysis—The Seasonless Glare:
Theo’s time in Las Vegas is all at once dazzling and numb as he drinks his days away with Boris. Using verbal irony and repetitive imagery, Theo illustrates how his life in Las Vegas reflects the city itself:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Days ran changelessly in the seasonless glare: hungover mornings on the school bus and our backs raw and pink from falling asleep by the pool, the gasoline reek of vodka and Popper’s constant smell of wet dog and chlorine […] Winter or summer, the days were dazzling; the desert air burned our nostrils and scraped our throats dry. Everything was funny; everything made us laugh. […] Our diet had made us malnourished, with soft brown bruises on our arms and legs […] still had a heaviness in my chest that never went away and my teeth were rotting out in the back from all the candy we ate. Apart from that, I was fine.
Related Themes:
Part 4, Chapter 9: Everything of Possibility
Explanation and Analysis—A Thousand Different Ways:
Once Lucius Reeve accuses Theo of stealing The Goldfinch and threatens to expose him, Theo’s anxiety and paranoia take a dark turn. Though the painting has offered Theo comfort in times of need, as he explains with imagery and hyperbole, he understands the severity of his situation:
Unlock with LitCharts A+No good could come of keeping it. It wasn’t even as if it had done me any good or given me any pleasure. Back in Las Vegas, I’d been able to look at it whenever I wanted, when I was sick or sleepy or sad, early morning and the middle of the night, autumn, summer, changing with weather and sun. It was one thing to see a painting in a museum but to see it in all those lights and moods and seasons was to see it a thousand different ways and to keep it shut in the dark—a thing made of light, that only lived in light—was wrong in more ways than I knew how to explain.
Related Themes:
Part 5, Chapter 11: The Gentleman’s Canal
Explanation and Analysis—Delirium:
After the shootout, Theo completely unravels, fueled by guilt and paranoia: he locks himself in his hotel room, terrified to even send out his laundry, for fear that the police will find him. With a metaphor and other nautical imagery, Theo illustrates his delirium:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Somehow my dream of the sailboat had bled through and infected the hotel room, so it was a room but also the cabin of a ship: built-in cupboards (over my bed and under the eaves) neatly fitted with countersunk brass and enamelled to a high nautical gloss. Ship’s carpentry; deck swaying, and lapping outside, the black canal water. Delirium: unmoored and drifting. Outside, the fog was thick, not a breath of wind, streetlights burning through with a diffuse, haggard, ashen stillness, softened and blurred to haze.
Related Themes:
