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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—City at Night:
Keyes uses visual imagery and metaphor in this passage to link Charlie’s nighttime wanderings with his restless search for meaning as he grows smarter. Charlie, driven by a need he cannot name, walks through the city at night and gazes at the lights that fill the skyline.
What drives me out of the apartment to prowl through the city? I wander through the streets alone—not the relaxing stroll of a summer night, but the tense hurry to get—where? [...] Searching . . . for what? I met a woman in Central Park. She was sitting on a bench near the lake, with a coat clutched around her despite the heat. We looked at the bright skyline on Central Park South, the honeycomb of lighted cells against the blackness, and I wished I could absorb them all.
All of the visual imagery of this passage contrasts light and dark, “blackness” and brightness. When Charlie describes “the bright skyline on Central Park South,” the city lights stand out in a “honeycomb” against the dark sky. This image separates the brightness of the city and its lights from the darkness of the night sky around it. He knows that the lights signify other people who are awake and working, and he feels attuned to them, wishing he could “absorb” them.
The “honeycomb” of lights is also a metaphor. By calling the pattern of windows a “honeycomb,” Charlie organizes the skyline into a living, working structure. It’s as though the city is a beehive and those awake and working are the bees. Each lit window is a cell within a larger pattern, and this metaphor gives the city an exciting feeling of energy and productivity. It’s also notable how much Charlie’s ability to use descriptive language has increased. Earlier in the novel he could not recognize or use figurative language at all, but now his thoughts increasingly begin to form images and comparisons. This shift shows the expansion of his mind, which also drives his restlessness in walking through the city at night.
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