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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 Watership Down
Chapter 5: In the Woods
Explanation and Analysis—Noises:
In the following excerpt from Chapter 5, the narrator characterizes one of the rabbits' earlier forays into the woods—strange, unfamiliar, and unsettling. In particular, the rabbits fixate on the noises that surround them, resulting in a curious example of auditory imagery:
From the moment he entered it, the wood seemed full of noises. There was a smell of damp leaves and moss, and everywhere the splash of water went whispering about. Just inside, the brook made a little fall into a pool, and the sound, enclosed among the trees, echoed as though in a cave. Roosting birds rustled overhead; the night breeze stirred the leaves; here and there a dead twig fell. And there were more sinister, unidentified sounds from further away; sounds of movement. To rabbits, everything unknown is dangerous.
Chapter 10: The Road and the Common
Explanation and Analysis—Scent:
Throughout Watership Down, the importance of scent as a means of communing with the surrounding environment is a key motif. Often, when the narrator describes a scene, the smell of the woods (flowers, grasses, trees) and the smell of surrounding danger predominates the descriptors. This use of sensory imagery is appropriate, reflecting the hyperawareness rabbits have towards scents in their environment at all times.
Chapter 38: The Thunder Breaks
Explanation and Analysis—Lightning Strike:
In the following passage from Chapter 38, General Woundwort and his cronies have Bigwig cornered. At the last moment, lightning strikes out of nowhere, distracting and scaring the authoritarian rabbits, giving Bigwig enough time to get away. The narrator uses distinctive sensory imagery to describe this lightning strike:
Unlock with LitCharts A+At that instant a dazzling claw of lightning streaked down the length of the sky. The hedge and the distant trees seemed to leap forward in the brilliance of the flash. Immediately upon it came the thunder: a high, tearing noise, as though some huge thing were being ripped to pieces close above, which deepened and turned to enormous blows of dissolution. Then the rain fell like a waterfall. In a few seconds the ground was covered with water and over it, to a height of inches, rose a haze formed of a myriad minute splashes.
Related Themes:
