Picture this… a light pinkish red sky covered in the sun’s orange light. Two white birds fly across the painted sunset as the world slowly starts to wake up. The waves of the beach slowly roll over each other and crash into the sand. Each grain of salt slowly dissolves and leaves a stain on the ground….. This vision was created in your head by using sensory imagery and appealing to the five senses. Sensory imagery is a literary device writers employ to engage a reader's mind on multiple levels. Elie Wiesel and Mary Jill both use sensory images throughout the text Night and the excerpt from the Diary of Trail of Tears to create a dark and disturbing tone. In chapter 6 of Night, Elie Wiesel uses sensory images to create a dark, disturbing tone. …show more content…
To appeal to the sight sense, Mary describes, “A hastily cut piece of cotton wood contained his body” (Hill 2). Mary Jill describes the scene of the body very vividly when she uses the words “hastily” and “cotton wood”. This is a very gory disturbing thing to visualize but it helps us understand how long and brutal the journey was. Many people could not complete the journey and their bodies were left behind on the trail. This was a very despairing event in history and this example contributes to the dark and disturbing tone. A second example of sensory imagery appeals to the hearing sense. Mary states, “The little children piteously cried day after day from weariness, hunger, and illness” (Hill 2). The sound of children and babies crying is very sorrowful and heart-wrenching. Many children also had to travel on the trail of tears and it was a very difficult, tiresome journey for their little bodies. Children are usually filled with happiness and laughter, but in the excerpt they are described in the exact opposite way which may disturb many readers and creates a dark tone. In the excerpt from the Trail of Tears Diary, Mary Hill uses sensory imagery to portray the same dark and disturbing tone also seen in chapter 6 of the novel