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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
Chapter 3: The Fall
Explanation and Analysis—The Plantation :
In her narration of her first visit to the Weylin Plantation, Dana uses detailed imagery:
I looked around for a white overseer and was surprised not to see one. The Weylin house surprised me too when I saw it in daylight. It wasn’t white. It had no columns, no porch to speak of. I was almost disappointed. It was a red-brick Georgian Colonial, boxy but handsome in a quiet kind of way, two and a half stories high with dormered windows and a chimney on each end. It wasn’t big or imposing enough to be called a mansion. In Los Angeles, in our own time, Kevin and I could have afforded it.
Dana, who was raised in Southern California in the 20th century, knows relatively little about the realities of slavery in the early 19th century. Here, her detailed imagery underscores her sense of surprise at seeing the house, as it does not resemble the white, columned Southern plantations that she has seen depicted in media. Instead, the Weyland Plantation, which is located in Maryland, a “border state” between the North and the South, is relatively modest in size and ornament. It is, she notes, a “red-brick Georgian Colonial, boxy but handsome,” with “dormered windows” and “a chimney on each end.” Here, Butler’s use of imagery highlights the fact that slavery was also practiced in states that did not side with the Confederacy during the Civil War and that its everyday reality doesn't necessarily match what people see in film depictions.
Related Themes:
