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Hyperbole
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—Lizabeth Eavesdropping:
When describing her experience of overhearing her parents arguing after waking up in the middle of the night, Lizabeth uses a simile and imagery, as seen in the following passage:
When I awoke, somewhere in the middle of the night, my mother had returned, and I vaguely listened to the conversation that was audible through the thin walls that separated our rooms. At first I heard no words, only voices. My mother’s voice was like a cool, dark room in summer—peacefully soothing, quiet. I loved to listen to it; it made things seem all right somehow. But my father’s voice cut through hers, shattering the peace.
The simile in this passage compares Lizabeth’s mother’s voice to “a cool, dark room in summer,” communicating to readers just how calming and comforting the young Lizabeth’s mother’s voice is to her. This sentence is also an example of imagery in that it appeals to readers’ senses by encouraging them to feel the coolness of the room as well as to hear the “soothing, quiet” nature of the mother’s voice. This description of Lizabeth’s father’s voice “cut[ting] through hers” and “shattering the peace” adds to the auditory imagery.
Collier includes imagery in this moment in order to help readers settle into a sense of serenity before Lizabeth’s father disrupts the scene by breaking down into tears about being unable to find work, which leads to Lizabeth’s coming-of-age experience of reckoning with the realities of her family's poverty.
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Explanation and Analysis—Abstract Memories:
When setting the scene at the beginning of the story, Lizabeth—the woman narrating the story from decades in the future—describes the town in which she grew up using both imagery and a metaphor, as seen in the following passage:
When I think of the home town of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets into the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of bare brown feet. I don’t know why I should remember only the dust. Surely there must have been lush green lawns and paved streets under leafy shade trees somewhere in town; but memory is an abstract painting—it does not present things as they are but rather as they feel.
Lizabeth uses imagery in this passage when describing the “brown, crumbly dust of late summer” that gets “between the toes of bare brown feet” and “into the eyes and makes them water” (as well as when describing the “lush green lawns” and “leafy shade trees” that she does not remember from her childhood but assumes were part of the town). Imagery brings readers more fully into a scene by engaging their senses, and Lizabeth’s descriptions here help readers to both see and feel the experience of growing up in this rural town in Maryland.
The metaphor that Lizabeth uses comes at the end of the passage when she notes that “memory is an abstract painting” that “does not present things as they are but rather as they feel.” This is Lizabeth’s way of noting that while it’s possible that her community had more lushness and vibrancy than she remembers (as seen in her description of the hypothetical lawns and trees in her town), the fact that she only remembers the dust signifies that her impoverished childhood, was largely defined by dryness, destitution, and lack.
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