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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 This Side of Paradise
Book 1, Chapter 1: Amory, Son of Beatrice
Explanation and Analysis—Monsignor's Robes:
In Book 1, Chapter 1, Amory meets Monsignor Darcy for the first time. The two hit it off immediately, and Fitzgerald makes a clever allusion to describe Monsignor's appearance and cement is appeal to the young Amory.
Monsignor was forty-four then, and bustling—a trifle too stout for symmetry, with hair the color of spun gold and a brilliant, enveloping personality. When he came into a room clad in his full purple regalia from thatch to toe, he resembled a Turner sunset, and attracted both admiration and attention.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 3: The Egotist Considers
Explanation and Analysis—Celestial Personalities:
In Book 1, Chapter 3, the illustrious Monsignor Darcy tries to give Amory some much-needed advice. In doing so, he uses a luminous metaphor to put Amory's growing pains in the perspective of the long arc of an entire human life:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] and don't worry about losing your "personality," as you persist in calling it; at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4pm.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Mind on Fire:
In Book 1, Chapter 3, Amory has a startling lapse in his cool, calculating demeanor as his sanity appears to waver on a night out with his friends in New York. In the sequence that follows, Fitzgerald uses a host of literary devices—including imagery, metaphor, and simile—to detail Amory's hallucinogenic feeling of horror:
Unlock with LitCharts A+There was a minute while temptation crept over him like a warm wind, and his imagination turned to fire, and he took the glass from Phoebe's hand.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 5: The Egotist Becomes a Personage
Explanation and Analysis—Through the Looking Glass:
In Book 2, Chapter 5, at the close of This Side of Paradise, Amory finally understands himself after a novel of striving for some unreachable persona. Fitzgerald imbues this triumphant sequence of realization with the imagery of light and glass:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed...
He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.
"I know myself," he cried, "but that is all."
Related Themes:
