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
Book 1
Explanation and Analysis—Their Translucent Tips:
Bigger and Gus, walking through the streets of Chicago, are awed by a pigeon that twists through the air. The pigeon is sublime against the grimy city, creating some beautiful imagery:
Then their eyes were riveted; a slate-colored pigeon swooped down to the middle of the steel car tracks and began strutting to and fro with ruffled feathers. A street car rumbled forward and the pigeon rose swiftly through the air on wings stretched so taut and sheer that Bigger could see the gold of the sun through their translucent tips. He tilted his head and watched the slate-colored bird flap and wheel out of sight over the edge of a high roof.
Bigger is immediately interested in the bird because he says (on the prior page) that he'd like to fly a plane, but only white people are allowed to do so. But the image of the bird is deeper than that.
As Bigger and Gus walk around the city, everything is gray, from the concrete below them to the steel buildings to the sky filled with smoke. As they walk, they discuss the difference between the lives of white and Black people in America. Then, a gray ("slate-colored") bird takes off from all the gray around him. The pervasive grayness around them represents the slog of day-to-day life in an oppressive world; the grayness evokes hopelessness, resignation, and ennui. The bird, then, represents a feeling of freedom from such a life. Bigger, always wanting to escape the oppressive world that controls him, loves the bird, seeing it as an emblem of escapism. As it flies into the air, the sun shines beautifully through its wings. Surely, Bigger wishes that he, too, could fly away.
The pigeon's color is just as important. Wright uses all sorts of colors as complex images in the novel. Here the gray world evokes a mixture between Blackness and whiteness. The world that Bigger and Gus walk through, gray all around, is a world where Black and white people have to cohabitate; in Bigger's words, "We live here and they live here." In that world, a pigeon who is as "slate-colored" as the world around it can still take flight and catch the rays of the sun. In other words, in a world where Black and white people live together, liberation is possible.
Bigger, as he discusses his feelings on racism with Gus, is shown the pigeon as an omen of a certain kind of liberation. This sort of world—where Black and white people live peacefully together—represents the best hope of civil rights leaders who fought for integration. This nonviolent contingent of the civil rights movement, which was typified by the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, was contrasted by another movement that advocated for Black power and opposed integration. The pigeon, then, is a vision of a certain kind of peaceful future that would be imagined in succeeding decades by the American civil rights movement.
Related Themes:
