When the narrator introduces Mr. Merrick, they use imagery and a simile, as seen in the following passage:
Feeble steps were heard on the stairs, and an old man, tall and frail, odorous of pipe smoke, with shaggy, unkept grey hair and a dingy beard, tobacco stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly up to the coffin […] seeming so pained and embarrassed by his wife’s orgy of grief that he had no consciousness of anything else. He did not even glance toward the coffin, but continued to look at her with a dull, frightened, appealing expression, as a spaniel looks at the whip.
In the first part of the passage, the narrator uses a variety of imagery, helping readers to hear Mr. Merrick’s “feeble steps” on the stairs, smell the “pipe smoke” on him, and visualize him as a “tall and frail” man with “shaggy, unkept grey hair” and a “tobacco stained” mouth who moved “uncertainly.” All of these descriptions combine to communicate just how passive Harvey’s father is, as well as how poorly he cares for himself and his appearance.
The simile in this passage—in which the narrator describes how Mr. Merrick looked at his wife “as a spaniel looks at the whip”—underlines Mr. Merrick’s anxious, feeble nature and communicates that the reason for it may be the unhealthy relationship he is in with his dominating and aggressive wife. In fact, Mr. Merrick is so afraid of her that he cannot even focus on saying goodbye to his son, whose coffin has just arrived and is open right in front of him. Readers are meant to understand here that Harvey did not come from a healthy home, which is implied to be one of the reasons why he left Sand City and refused to return during his lifetime.
At Harvey’s funeral, as Steavens is trying to process the cruel and unsophisticated nature of most of Harvey’s family members and extended community, he hears a loud sound. The narrator uses imagery here to capture the source of the noise as well as Steavens’s reaction to it:
From the kitchen an uproar was sounding; when the dining-room door opened, the import of it was clear. The mother was abusing the maid for having forgotten to make the dressing for the chicken salad which had been prepared for the watchers. Steavens had never heard anything in the least like it; it was injured, emotional, dramatic abuse, unique and masterly in its excruciating cruelty, as violent and unrestrained as had been her grief of twenty minutes before. With a shudder of disgust the lawyer went into the dining-room and closed the door into the kitchen.
The imagery here is primarily centered on bringing readers more closely into the scene, helping them to hear the sounds of Mrs. Merrick beating her employee Roxy alongside Steavens. The narrator initially vaguely describes the “uproar” sounding in the kitchen, followed by the more detailed description of the sounds emerging from “injured, emotional, dramatic abuse, unique and masterly in its excruciating cruelty” and that “Steavens had never heard anything in the least like it.”
The narrator follows up this auditory imagery with the more bodily description of Steavens “shudder[ing] of disgust” when fleeing into the closed kitchen. The imagery here helps readers to understand viscerally how upsetting Mrs. Merrick's cruel behaviors is and, therefore, how correct Harvey was in deciding to leave Sand City as soon as he was able. Like Roxy, Harvey was not valued in his home and faced a similar sort of abuse from his mother.
