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Hyperbole
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 Magic Mountain
Part 1, Chapter 1: Arrival
Explanation and Analysis—The Alps:
Mann employs detailed imagery in a scene in which Hans looks out of the train window as it winds its way up the Alps towards Davos, his destination:
He looked out—the train was winding through a narrow pass; you could see the forward cars and the laboring engine, emitting great straggling tatters of brown, green, and black smoke. Water roared in the deep ravine on his right; dark pines on his left struggled up between boulders toward a stony gray sky. There were pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight returned, vast chasms were revealed, with a few villages far below [...] Magnificent vistas opened onto regions toward which they were slowly climbing, a world of ineffable, phantasmagoric Alpine peaks, soon lost again to awestruck eyes as the tracks took another curve.
Part 2, Chapter 2: At the Tienappels’/Hans Castorp’s Moral State
Explanation and Analysis—Hamburg:
Mann employs vivid imagery when describing the city of Hamburg, where Hans was raised, first by his parents, later by his grandfather, and finally by Consul Tienappel, his mother’s uncle:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The atmosphere of the metropolitan seaport, the damp atmosphere of global shopkeeping and prosperity, had been the air of life itself for his forefathers, and with great gusto he breathed it now as a matter of course and found it profoundly satisfying. His nose took in the fumes of the harbor, of coal and tar, the pungent odors of the world’s produce piled high, and his eyes watched the huge steam cranes on the docks—so calm, wise, and monumentally strong that they looked like hardworking elephants—as they transferred tons of sacks, bales, crates, barrels, and carboys from the bowels of idle seagoing vessels [...]
Part 4, Chapter 5: Hippe
Explanation and Analysis—The Woods:
The narrator employs both simile and imagery in a passage that describes Hans’s journey into the wooded mountains that surround the sanatorium:
Unlock with LitCharts A+When he emerged from the woods, he was astonished by the splendid view opening up before him—an intimate, closed landscape, like some magnificent, peaceful painting.
From the slope on his right, a mountain stream swept along a flat, stony bed, then rushed foaming over terraced boulders in its path, and finally flowed more serenely toward the valley, crossed at that point by a picturesque wooden bridge with simple railings. The ground about was blue with bell-like flowers of a lushly growing shrub [...] The murmur of isolation reigned above this beautiful, remote spot.
Part 7, Chapter 11: The Thunderbolt
Explanation and Analysis—War:
The Magic Mountain concludes with a brief scene in which Hans, who has finally been forced to leave the Berghof, participates in an unspecified battle of the First World War. Mann employs striking imagery in his depiction of the chaotic and bloody battlefield:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Where are we? What is that? Where has our dream brought us? Dusk, rain, and mud, fire reddening a murky sky that bellows incessantly with dull thunder, the damp air rent by piercing, singsong whines and raging, onrushing, hellhound howls that end their arc in a splintering, spraying, fiery crash filled with groans and screams, with brass blaring, about to burst, and drumbeats urging onward, faster, faster. There is a wood spewing drab hordes that run, stumble, jump. There is a line of hills, dark against the distant conflagration whose glow sometimes gathers into fluttering flames.
Related Themes:
