Imagery

1. Definition: The collection of images used in a work of fiction in order to express feeling and states of mind; the mental pictures created by the author's words. Writers use images in various ways to bring the world of the story alive and to give it deeper meaning.
When you analyze a story's imagery, your primary purpose is to uncover the author's purpose in creating certain images and patterns of images and to reveal the connection between that purpose and a larger meaning of the story.

2. Key elements
Most images are created through words that appeal to reader's senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.
- Sight: "A hill of man, whirling a tree over his head."(167)
- Sound: "I am going to the l-a-t-r-i-n-e."(168)
- Taste: "A mound of green grass boiled with green peppers and salt."(169)
- Smell: "Stuffy and smoky second-class carriage."(74)
- Touch: "mother's hand continually stroked the bald patch that ran across the top of his head"(83).

3. Figurative language
Writers of fiction use common language in unique ways to go beyond physical description, and these words (known as 'figurative language') in fiction often carry suggestive or symbolic meaning in addition to their literal (primary, factual) meaning. Most figurative language is created through images: mental pictures that tap into readers’ past experiences and memories and, through association, allow them to imagine, visualize, and re-create physical scenes and sensations.

To give images rich associations or deeper meaning, a writer uses 'figures of speech' addition to imagery (a collection of images, which is mentioned above).

- simile : an explicit comparison between two things of a different kind or quality, usually introduced by 'like' or 'as'. Ex) "Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice."

- metaphor : an implied comparison (not introduced by 'like' or 'as') between two things of a different kind of quality. Ex) "The house was an altar."

- personification : human or lifelike qualities given to something non-human or lifeless.
Ex) "the fire was clever"

- symbols: a writer sometimes creates concrete images as 'symbols' that stand for something abstract or invisible.

4. Vocabulary for discussing imagery
- delineate : to show by drawing or description; to portray
- depict: : to describe; to represent in words
- exemplify : to serve as an example of; to show by example
- express : to reveal; to represent by a sign or symbol
- illustrate : to make clear by using an example or comparison
- portray : to describe in words; to create a picture of
- present : to offer for consideration
- render : to represent in a verbal or artistic form
- reveal : to make known something that has been secret or hidden
- sketch : to make an outline of; to indicate briefly