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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Dashing and Flashing:
When he is nostalgically reflecting on the times before color was made illegal in Flatland, A Square describes a colorful battle scene using rich visual imagery:
The sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles suddenly facing about, and exchanging the sombre black of their bases for the orange and purple of the two sides including their acute angle; the militia of the Equilateral Triangles tricoloured in red, white, and blue; the mauve, ultra-marine, gamboge, and burnt umber of the Square artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermilion guns; the dashing and flashing of the five-coloured and six-coloured Pentagons and Hexagons
The use of visual imagery in this passage creates a bright, dynamic tableau for Abbott's reader. The visual imagery of Flatland is often quite difficult to follow, as everything is colorless and much of the story is imagined in two dimensions. This scene, although it's still "Flat," has a lot more visual cues the reader can build upon. Its diction is also even more startling when it's juxtaposed with the dull, grayish language of the "fog" of colorlessness in Flatland. Compared to the rest of the novel, this passage is a riot of color. The description of the battle preparation is intense, with colors and movements and sounds piling on one another in a cacophony. Words like "dashing" and "flashing" add a sense of motion and nervous energy to the scene, making the colors appear even more vibrant and lively.
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