When authors want to make a point that leaves a memory or needs to make you think about something, they typically use imagery. It can inscribe an image to show the severity or serenity of the moment in a way different from the normal statement, in a deeper way that can leave you with a feeling of joy or fill you with sorrow. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses imagery to show that surviving during the Holocaust was difficult and often given up on. In the beginning, Jews were expelled from their homes, leaving the town barron.
Imagery is used throughout, in order to engage the reader and assist them in understanding things from Saul’s perspective. For example, the sense of sight was touched on when it describes the string of light bulbs, the shadows of the ice and the rocks and spindly trees. It creates a mental image with the use of sophisticated adjectives such as humped, spindly and eerie. Also, the description of the smell is very detailed by saying that it was a “potent mix” of various unpleasing scents. This proves that imagery is a device that is essential in helping the audience imagine the setting, make connections and hold interest.
This also makes the readers have a better feel of the story, and sort of feel as if they are in that moment, feeling everything and seeing it in their minds. Another example of when Wiesel uses imagery to achieve the feeling of
Imagery allows a reader to imagine the events of a story within their mind through mental images. Imagery can describe how something looks, a sound, a feeling, a taste, or a smell. Imagery is especially important when the author is describing a character or a setting. The short story The Man In The Black Suit by Stephen King has several excellent examples of imagery.
This helps bring light to what the speaker is focused on at the time. Imagery is when language is used to help provide a picture of what is being written. In this song, “On a cobweb afternoon / In a room full of emptiness / By a freeway” helps the reader imagine
In the narrative, imagery enhances the audiences’ perspective of the setting, characters, and plot. The Imagery in “The Sniper '' creates a clear picture of the setting within the audience. At the beginning of the story, the author uses lots of vivid descriptions to establish the setting. The Author writes, “The long June twilight faded into the night” (O’Flaherty para. 1).
Particularly when Andy Barber in Defending Jacob describes the days leading to Jacob’s trial as daunting due to “the intense awareness of time, the heaviness of the passing minutes, the dizzying, trippy sense that the days are both too few and too long (Landay 154.).” These words portray imagery because it recounts the agony the Barber’s experienced each day. This quote supports the theme because even though they were living a temporarily grueling life, they decided they would strive for a normal one. Similarly, the narrator of “The Art of Resilience” explains that Steven Wolin, a psychiatrist, shares the past of a client who “had been whipped by her father throughout childhood anytime he felt challenged (Marano.).” This addition is an example of imagery because it clarifies the intensity of the woman’s state, which allows the reader to visualize the brutality of her childhood.
The images that the words create makes it feel as if you were really there looking at everything actually happening. Such as, “They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, laid out by the mast, amidships. The great ring-giver. Farfetched treasures were piled on him,and precious gear.” This is a great example of imagery.
Infact many of his pieces includes examples of similes, metaphors, and personification. These different forms of figurative language help the reader create a "mental picture" inside the mind. For example,”They walked in single file. The entrance to the path was like a sort of arch leading into a gloomy tunnel made by two great trees that leant together, too old and strangled with ivy and hung with lichen to bear more than a few blackened leaves. The path itself was narrow and wound in and out among the trunks.”
An example from the book is “the slanting veil of rain” which basically means the rain was coming down in sheets. The audience could imagine the smell of the rain, the way the rain taste, the way the rain sound when it came down, the way it felt on your hand, and how it looked like coming down. Another example would be “the river was white with foam” which gives a description of what the river looked like. “…the bending trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume flakes, the dim outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloudwrack and the slanting veil of rain” (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer n.d.). Another example of Imagery in this story would be this quote, “For some time was no noise but the grating sound of the shovels discharging their freight of mould and gravel” (Twain 63).
Imagery is a literary device that uses descriptive wording to put a vivid image of a scenario in your mind. Dickens uses imagery to describe the scenery and the change in Scrooge’s physical appearance throughout the course of the story. “eezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self- contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.
Regardless of where one lives, nature surrounds them. It is quiet in the winter, blossoms in the spring, flourishes in the summer and then finally it lays to rest in the autumn. Often in literature, writers utilize natural imagery because it is something that can be easily understood by everybody regardless of race, gender, religion, creed, and ethnicity. This imagery provides a deeper understanding of the book, play, story, or poem for the reader.
Imagery can be so beautiful and vivid, it really engulfs you into the reading. It holds significance because we as humans like for things to be drawn out for us or painted out. Creating a narrative that's easy to understand, of course no one wants a story that's filled with misconception. Imagery provides a deeper connection with the deeper and takes the reader back to a time or a place just like repetition.
“A Short Guide to Imagery, Symbolism, and Figurative Language Imagery” describes imagery as “a writer or speaker’s use of words or figures of speech to create a vivid mental picture or physical sensation”(Clark). In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses nature imagery to portray the journey of emotions that Mrs. Mallard experiences
In writing, using figurative language is like painting a picture with a vast palette of colors. Figurative language encompasses more than just creating a mental picture through a simile, and other examples include imagery, allusion, alliteration, and personification. Imagery creates a scene in the reader’s mind by engaging the senses; describing a crackling noise, smoky aroma, and frigid air gives the audience a mental picture of a bonfire without explicitly mentioning it. Allusion draws on a past experience, and could be applied by calling a bonfire a beacon of Gondor. Alliteration emphasizes a repeated letter or sound, and is often practiced in poems or play scripts.
