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Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Like Water Itself:
In this passage, Gan observes T'Gatoi as she approaches him at the kitchen table. Butler uses descriptive and sensory language to evoke a clear image of T'Gatoi's movements.
She made a lot of little clicking sounds when she walked on bare floor, each limb clicking in succession as it touched down. Waves of little clicks.
She came to the table, raised the front half of her body above it, and surged onto it. Sometimes she moved so smoothly she seemed to flow like water itself. She coiled herself into a small hill in the middle of the table and looked at me.
Gan describes his observations of T'Gatoi moving through the house, creating vivid images of the scene. From the "waves of little clicks" to the flow of her body being "like water itself," the reader is prompted to imagine T'Gatoi's insectile, foreign body within Gan's human, Terran home.
The imagery is meant to be unsettling. The Tlic are physically very different from humans, and from her numerous limbs to the way she sits atop the table, it is evident how differently T'Gatoi exists within Gan's home environment.
While this imagery may be disturbing, reminding the reader of an insect, it also reveals how Gan is in awe of T'Gatoi's fluidity. It seems almost as if he considers her beautiful and natural, "like water itself." This contrast reflects the complex and dual nature of their relationship—one of both fear and love.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Horror of Birth:
After T'Gatoi prepares Bram Lomas for birth, she asks Gan to hold down Lomas's body. She is ready to remove the grubs, and in a passage filled with gruesome imagery, Gan observes as she makes the first incision.
Lomas's entire body stiffened under T'Gatoi's claw, though she merely rested it against him as she wound the rear section of her body around his legs. He might break my grip, but he would not break hers. He wept helplessly as she used his pants to tie his hands, then pushed his hands above his head so that I could kneel on the cloth between them and pin them in place. She rolled up his shirt and gave it to him to bite down on.
And she opened him.
His body convulsed with the first cut. He almost tore himself away from me. The sound he made... I had never heard such sounds come from anything human. T'Gatoi seemed to pay no attention as she lengthened and deepened the cut, now and then pausing to lick away blood. His blood vessels contracted, reacting to the chemistry of her saliva, and the bleeding slowed.
Butler describes with surgical precision the process of an N'Tlic giving birth. She writes without figurative language and instead remains straightforward and objective—this adds to the scene's solemnity and heightens Gan's visual experience. As Gan observes T'Gatoi manipulate and cut Bram Lomas's body, the reader is able to clearly picture the procedure via Butler's descriptive language.
This image displays just how violent and horrifying the birthing process can be, making Gan's relationship with T'Gatoi—and more generally, the Terrans' relationship with the Tlic—more complicated.
Related Themes:
