Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. While the reader knows that this is a dark night, the sense of sound makes the scene even more realistic. ![]() In this excerpt, there is a juxtaposition of two sounds: the bright noise of the horse’s harness bells and the nearly silent sound of wind and snowflake. When most people think of Robert Frost’s famous poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the final refrain comes to mind: “And miles to go before I sleep.” Yet the short poem contains many imagery examples that are simple yet set the scene well. (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost) There are many examples of imagery using the sense of taste, including “a tear would salt her palate,” “oranges and rhubarb,” and “the taste of primary minerals.” The imagery in this excerpt makes the experience of an eating disorder much more vivid and imaginable to the reader. This passage from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude discusses one of the character’s pica eating disorder. ( One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez) But she persevered, overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she was getting back her ancestral appetite, the taste of primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of what was the original food. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste would be the best cure for the temptation. ![]() Those secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to weep. On rainy afternoons, embroidering with a group of friends on the begonia porch, she would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia would salt her palate when she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the earthworms had pushed up in the garden. Examples of Imagery in Literature Example #1: Taste Thus, when analyzing literature it is important to consider the imagery used so as to understand both the mood and the symbolism in the piece. In the previous example of MacBeth, the thunder and lightning that open the play symbolize both the storm that is already taking place in Scotland and the one that is about to begin once MacBeth takes over the throne. While an author may use imagery just to help readers understand the fictive world, details of imagery often can be read symbolically. Indeed, even Shakespeare used this type of opening for his famous play MacBeth: the three witches in the beginning speak of the “thunder, lightning rain” and the “fog and filthy air.” ![]() This particular imagery also creates a mood of foreboding. One of the key usages is that the imagery in a piece can help create mood, such as the clichéd opening “It was a dark and stormy night.” While this line is too hackneyed for any author to actually use it, it is a good example of imagery in that the reader immediately pictures the kind of setting in which the story may take place. Poets, novelists, and playwrights use imagery for many reasons. ![]() Imagery examples are prevalent in all types of literature from cultures around the world.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |