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Idioms
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 3: Havermeyer
Explanation and Analysis—Billowing Pendants:
In Chapter 3, Heller constructs a quite unusual sex scene, using a series of similes and imagery. This scene, first described here, will come back up throughout the novel:
Each time she landed with the heel of her shoe, Orr giggled louder, infuriating her still further so that she flew up still higher into the air for another shot at his noodle, her wondrously full breasts soaring all over the place like billowing pennants in a strong wind and her buttocks and strong thighs shim-sham-shimmying this way and that like some horrifying bonanza.
The similes ("like billowing pennants in a strong wind" and "like some horrifying bonanza") have multiple effects on this sentence. For one, this is a long and complex sentence, and the familiar structure of the simile helps to hold the sentence together. The similes are clearer than if Heller attempted to describe the scene more directly.
The similes also work off of each other. The "billowing pennants" describe what the "horrifying bonanza" looks like and vice versa. The similes, together, characterize this sex scene as a disturbingly loud and garish carnival, combining together for a fuller and more evocative image. Thus, together, the similes describe this woman in an unpredictable and strange way.
The rest of the imagery, outside of the similes, elaborates the scene. It is inherently silly: Orr's penis is called his "noodle" and the woman is "shim-sham-shimmying." But it is also fundamentally erotic, in the misogynistic method of this book: the woman is never named but her breasts, buttocks, and thighs are described in detail.
Heller intentionally subverts any attractive or intimate sex scene here. The comparisons to bright flags and a "bonanza," in the similes, emphasize the fact that this is an eminently visible, odd, and uncontrolled situation.
Chapter 12: Bologna
Explanation and Analysis—Clear and Warm:
Just before the military leadership finds that Yossarian had altered the maps to show that Bologna had been "taken," in Chapter 12, Heller creates some evocative imagery of Captain Black:
Captain Black tugged himself erect and began scratching his scrawny long thighs methodically. In a little while he dressed and emerged from his tent, squinting, cross, and unshaven. The sky was clear and warm. He peered without emotion at the map. Sure enough, they had captured Bologna. Inside the intelligence tent, Corporal Kolodny was already removing the maps of Bologna from the navigation kits.
The imagery is quite specific and visceral, of an old, decrepit man still at the helm of a war effort. Heller's focus, first, on Black "scratching his scrawny long thighs methodically" evokes the entire character of this scene. He is sleepy and, for the moment, is focused entirely on his itch; likewise, Heller begins his description by focusing entirely on his itch.
Then, we see a whole picture of the disheveled man, "cross and unshaven," walking out from his tent; this unpleasant image is contrasted immediately by a "clear and warm" sky. This nice day serves to make Black look even more unkempt. But the comparison to the atmospheric conditions also serves to show that Black is entirely at the whim of his circumstances. As soon as Black (and Corporal Kolodny) realizes that Bologna seems to have been captured, he believes that it is. Black doesn't make active choices; he only reacts to his circumstances.
In sum, Heller communicates the morning routine of an unshaven, unimpressive man. Then, Heller references the sun and sky, to indicate that Black's situation controls him more than he controls his situation. This subtle characterization takes place only through imagery, through appearances and small actions.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15: Piltchard & Wren
Explanation and Analysis—Boom-Boom-Boom:
Yossarian, in Chapter 15, flying his plane over Bologna and trying to drop his bomb, is taking heavy bullet fire. This is the first instance in the book of sustained armed conflict. But there is not a wide description of the battle at large. Instead, Heller's third-person narrator shows readers the action though Yossarian's reactions to the situation, or stream of consciousness, with vivid imagery of his perceptions and reactions:
He had been lulled, lured, and trapped, and there was nothing to do but sit there like an idiot and watch the ugly black puffs smashing up to kill him. [...] He was trembling steadily as the plane crept ahead. He could hear the hollow boom-boom-boom-boom of the flak pounding all around him in overlapping measures of four, the sharp, piercing crack! of a single shell exploding suddenly close by. His head was bursting with a thousand dissonant impulses as he prayed for the bombs to drop. He wanted to sob.
The description of the battle is mediated through Yossarian's emotional reactions to the situation. The reader is given a particular and specific view of Yossarian's feelings: he had to "sit there like an idiot" as he was shot at. The sounds of the battle are given to readers as Yossarian hears them. The reader understands that these booms and cracks ring even louder in Yossarian's head than they do across the battlefield, because of his terror and inability to act, stuck in his plane. In the final line of this despondent paragraph, readers see the full breadth of Yossarian's consciousness, all the "thousand different impulses" in his head. By presenting the battle to the reader through Yossarian's perception, the narrator also gives a close look at Yossarian's thoughts, as the reader experiences the battle inside of the terrified pilot's head.
The imagery in this passage is also rich and complex. The bullets are rendered as "ugly black puffs." It is a mark of the anxiety and terror of the situation that a word like "puff" appears grotesque and intimidating in this context. The scene's auditory imagery, its "booms" and "cracks," is simple but effective. And the scene uses what might be called tactile imagery, as the reader can feel Yossarian's head "bursting" with all his fearful thoughts.
Chapter 22: Milo the Mayor
Explanation and Analysis—Pomaded Pup Tent:
Heller describes Orr's face in rich visual imagery in Chapter 22:
He had a raw bulgy face, with hazel eyes squeezing from their sockets like matching brown halves of marbles and thick, wavy particolored hair sloping up to a peak on the top of his head like a pomaded pup tent.
This is only one long sentence, but it is full of complex images. His eyes look like marbles sliced in half, which is an object that most people likely haven't seen and would have to imagine. "Particolored" means, perhaps obviously, in multiple colors, but it is not a common word, and for that matter hair is usually not particolored naturally. And a "pup tent" is not immediately recognizable to most people who haven't fought in a war: it is a small tent with two triangular openings on either end and two flat diagonal sides. And the tent is "pomaded"; "pomade" is not often used as a verb, and the sense gets more complex when "pomaded" is applied, within the simile, to a tent, not to hair.
In sum, the imagery, and the sentence in which it is presented, is difficult. The reader has to do a little work, or a little guessing, to understand what Orr looks like. This is typical of Heller's imagery: it is specific and intense, but strange and difficult to parse. These images slow the reader down and force them to investigate each aspect of the image. This brings a sense of abstraction to the moment: the reader has to think about the relation of these figurative devices to the real thing. The reader is left to question how "real" Orr is, made up of these absurd images. Heller more often deals with a different type of abstraction, trying to make the war seem absurd through his characteristic paradoxes and contradictions. But in addition to that method, he describes his characters in odd ways that force the reader to slow down, which also creates a sense of absurdity and abstraction.
Chapter 41: Snowden
Explanation and Analysis—Ether Too:
As Yossarian lies in bed, nearly dying, in Chapter 41, Heller depicts his strange situation using rich, complex, multi-sensory imagery:
Yossarian played dead with his eyes shut while the clerk admitted him by shuffling some papers, and then he was rolled away slowly into a stuffy, dark room with searing spotlights overhead in which the cloying smell of formaldehyde and sweet alcohol was even stronger. The pleasant, permeating stink was intoxicating. He smelled ether too and heard glass tinkling. He listened with secret, egotistical mirth to the husky breathing of the two doctors. It delighted him that they thought he was unconscious and did not know he was listening.
It is a well-known scientific phenomenon that when one of the body's senses is cut off, the other senses become more strongly perceptive. Yossarian is certainly experiencing this feeling. Lying with his eyes closed, he hears acutely the sound of shuffling papers and the doctors' "husky breathing." He feels the heat of the "searing lights": a tactile sense. He smells formaldehyde so "cloyingly" he can probably taste it. With such sensuous imagery, the reader cannot help but feel as if they are lying in the hospital bed like Yossarian.
But Heller, characteristically, couches this imagery within an ironic situation. In a moment in which Yossarian is supremely conscious, and doing everything he can to use his remaining senses, he appears entirely unconscious. Indeed Heller takes the irony to the extreme: Yossarian "played dead," while he is as alive to his surroundings as possible. Yossarian is "delighted" by this situation. He is so happy largely because, by this point in the book, he hates these doctors (one of whom says "Let's jab our thumbs down inside his wound and gouge it") and everything associated with the military.
Related Themes:
