Previous
Genre
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
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Summer Sunshine:
In Chapter 7, at her daughters' urging, Kimmerer helps them tap the maple trees in their new yard. She uses a metaphorical image to describe the syrup the trees yield:
The syrup we pour over pancakes on a winter morning is summer sunshine flowing in golden streams to pool on our plates.
Kimmerer's comparison of the syrup to "summer sunshine flowing in golden streams" is evocative and poetic. It helps the reader see the beautiful amber color of the syrup and feel the familial warmth of a winter morning when Kimmerer and her daughters share pancakes. However, the image is more than a metaphor. It is very nearly literal. Kimmerer has just used her ecological expertise to explain how and why the trees make the sap that gets boiled down to syrup. A maple tree's roots store starch. The tiny shoots that grow out the tree's branches in early spring need sugar to fuel their development into leaves, so they send hormonal signals to the roots to begin converting the starch into sugar. The roots draw in water from the ground to create a sugar solution (sap) that the tree draws up the trunk to feed the shoots. The few weeks when the sap is flowing are the prime time to tap maple trees.
Once the leaves are fully formed in the summer, they use photosynthesis to produce a surplus of sugar. This sugar flows back down the trunk into the roots, where the tree stores it as starch for next year. When Kimmerer writes that the syrup is summer sunshine, she is making a scientific as well as poetic statement. The syrup is distilled from the sugar solution the tree makes out of the light energy from the summer sunshine. This marriage between poetic language and scientific knowledge is not only one of Kimmerer's strengths as a writer, but it is also emblematic of her argument that science and a love of nature do not have to be at odds with one another.
Related Themes:
Chapter 26
Explanation and Analysis—Lonely Winter:
In Chapter 26, Kimmerer describes the history and origin of the Windigo. She starts the chapter with striking imagery that foreshadows the later scene where she finally comes face to face with the Windigo:
In the winter brilliance, the only sounds are the rub of my jacket against itself, the soft ploompf of my snowshoes, the rifle-shot crack of trees bursting their hearts in the freezing temperatures, and the beating of my own heart, pumping hot blood to fingers still tingling in double mittens. In the break between squalls, the sky is painfully blue. The snowfields sparkle below like shattered glass.
[...]
Everybody's hungry.
Kimmerer is excellent at setting a scene by including small sensory details, and the opening to this chapter is no exception. The imagery at first seems beautiful. The "brilliance" and "sparkle" of the snow, the downy rustle of Kimmerer's jacket, the onomatopoetic "ploompf of my snowshoes," the cracking of the trees, the feel of warm blood in cold fingers, the blowing "squalls" of snow, and the blue sky all draw on the reader's senses to create a vivid winter scene. Any reader who has been outside on a snowy day knows at least some of these feelings and is immediately transported to the day Kimmerer describes.
The more closely the reader pays attention to the exact sensations Kimmerer describes, the less picturesque the scene becomes. Snowshoeing can be hard work. Kimmerer's heart is struggling to warm her "still tingling" fingers despite two layers of mittens. The sky is not only blue, but the "painful blue" that can cause snow blindness. The cracking of the trees sounds violent, like "rifle-shot." Kimmerer knows that the sound is really that of the trees' own circulatory systems exploding due to the cold. Even the sparkle of the snowfields is hostile, "like shattered glass." The scene Kimmerer is painting is one of a winter that is hostile to survival. It all leads up to the striking image that stands alone as its own paragraph, gnawing at the reader's stomach: "Everybody's hungry."
The imagery is both captivating and frightening. Kimmerer uses it to make a point about what makes us vulnerable to the Windigo. When we are hungry, threatened, and alone, that is when the Windigo can come on the scene. By driving this point home now with vivid imagery, Kimmerer lays the groundwork for the solution she eventually finds to the Windigo's terror: she feeds it and shows it that its hunger can be sated. If the Windigo rages in times of scarcity, it can be healed in times of plenty.
Related Themes:
Chapter 30
Explanation and Analysis—Painting with Fire:
In Chapter 30, Kimmerer describes the lessons her father taught her about fire. She recalls how he used a simile and imagery to instill in her the idea of fire as her people's art and science all in one:
The fire stick was like a paintbrush on the landscape. Touch it here in a small dab and you’ve made a green meadow for elk; a light scatter there burns off the brush so the oaks make more acorns. Stipple it under the canopy and it thins the stand to prevent catastrophic fire. Draw the firebrush along the creek and the next spring it’s a thick stand of yellow willows. A wash over a grassy meadow turns it blue with camas. To make blueberries, let the paint dry for a few years and repeat.
This comparison between a fire stick and a paintbrush turns the entire landscape into a canvas. The images are beautiful in themselves, but they also convey the notion that creating a thriving ecosystem such as this involves a great deal of care and technique. The artist must know just how to apply a "small dab" or "light scatter" of fire, how to stipple it or create a wash across a wide open section, and how to come back to the painting year after year to create a whole new picture. The extended simile leaves no doubt that working with fire is a creative art that takes a massive amount of knowledge and skill to do well.
People often think of art and science as opposite practices, thinking of art as anchored in the spiritual world and science as anchored in the physical world. This simile helps Kimmerer demonstrate the error in this binary division. Her father describes fire as a way to create beauty, but it also has everything to do with science and the physical world. Today, we struggle to manage wildfires, to bring back endangered species, and to help our ecosystems sustain themselves. Scientists are constantly searching for data-backed solutions to all of these problems. The way Kimmerer's father describes it, one highly effective solution is the art of fire-making. By approaching the natural world with a creative eye, Indigenous people have long been implementing the very solutions scientists have been looking for.
Related Themes:
