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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
Key Examples in The Hairy Ape
Scene One
Explanation and Analysis—Old Ship:
In the following passage from Scene 1, Paddy uses imagery to paint a romanticized picture of the past, describing the voyage of an older merchant vessel, likely from the 17th or 18th century:
PADDY: Oh, to be scudding south again wid the power of the Trade Wind driving her on steady through the nights and the days! Full sail on her! Nights and days! Nights when the foam of the wake would be flaming wid fire, when the sky’d be blazing and winking wid stars. Or the full of the moon maybe.
Related Themes:
Scene Two
Explanation and Analysis—Mildred:
In the following excerpt from the beginning of Scene 2, the audience is introduced to Mildred and her aunt, both of whom are wealthy. O'Neill romanticizes neither woman, and he doesn't romanticize their upper-class lifestyle, either. On the contrary, he directs a pair of brutal similes against them, generating an image of contrast between their supposed superior position and the reality of their behavior:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In the midst of this, these two incongruous, artificial figures, inert and disharmonious, the elder like a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge, the younger looking as if the vitality of her stock had been sapped before she was conceived, so that she is the expression not of its life energy but merely of the artificialities that energy had won for itself in the spending.
Related Themes:
