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 5: May and November
Explanation and Analysis—Light and Dark:
The contrast between light and dark imagery is a motif in the novel. In Chapter 5, when Phoebe first wakes up in the House of the Seven Gables, her very presence brings light to an otherwise dark and gloomy house:
There were curtains to Phoebe’s bed; a dark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which now brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner [...]. The morning light, however, soon stole into the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains. Finding the new guest there—with a bloom on her cheeks like the morning’s own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as when an early breeze moves the foliage—the dawn kissed her brow.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6: Maule’s Well
Explanation and Analysis—Death and Decay:
A motif in the novel is suggestive images of rot, decay, and corpses. For example, in Chapter 6, Hawthorne describes the garden around Maule's well:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a long period of time; such as fallen leaves, the petals of flowers, and the stalks and seed vessels of vagrant and lawless plants, more useful after their death than ever while flaunting in the sun. The evil of these departed years would naturally have sprung up again, in such rank weeds (symbolic of the transmitted vices of society) as are always prone to root themselves about human dwellings.
Related Themes:
Chapter 12: The Daguerreotypist
Explanation and Analysis—Death and Decay:
A motif in the novel is suggestive images of rot, decay, and corpses. For example, in Chapter 6, Hawthorne describes the garden around Maule's well:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a long period of time; such as fallen leaves, the petals of flowers, and the stalks and seed vessels of vagrant and lawless plants, more useful after their death than ever while flaunting in the sun. The evil of these departed years would naturally have sprung up again, in such rank weeds (symbolic of the transmitted vices of society) as are always prone to root themselves about human dwellings.
Related Themes:
Chapter 19: Alice’s Posies
Explanation and Analysis—Maule's Flood:
In Chapter 19, Phoebe returns to the House of the Seven Gables after, unbeknownst to her, Clifford and Hepzibah have fled and left Judge Pyncheon's corpse behind. When she approaches, some of the imagery the narrator uses to describe the house foreshadows the ending of the book:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Maule’s well had overflowed its stone border, and made a pool of formidable breadth in that corner of the garden.
Related Themes:
