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: The Unveiling of the Stranger
Explanation and Analysis—Griffin's Room in Iping:
In Chapter 7, when Mrs. Hall becomes increasingly distraught that Griffin has not paid his bill, H. G. Wells uses imagery to characterize Griffin's time spent in his parlor room as miserable:
And inside, in the artificial darkness of the parlour, into which only one thin jet of sunlight penetrated, the stranger, hungry we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, pored through his dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys, audible if invisible, outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent twang of chlorine tainted the air.
The room that Griffin is in is dark, nearly completely devoid of light except for a single ray. The description of the single light in a dirty room is somewhat creepy, and the imagery heralds back to the Gothic horror movement. Furthermore, Wells plays on the feeling of hunger, for Griffin’s stomach is empty due to the fact that he is separated from man and therefore unable to eat except for at very specific times. Appealing to this somewhat unpleasant feeling of hunger serves to demonstrate the dire condition that Griffin is in.
He is shown to be isolated from the rest of humanity because of his wrapping, since the bandages keep him from the rest of the world. From the sensory details regarding his temperature, the reader is shown that this is an unpleasant sort of isolation, as Griffin is hot and fearful.
Lastly, Wells, using a combination of sight and smell details, also characterizes the room as dirty. The room smells strongly of chemicals, and dirty broken bottles are scattered about. The image of the room as a whole demonstrates a state of destitution and desperation.
Related Themes:
Chapter 20: At the House in Great Portland Street
Explanation and Analysis—Turning Invisible:
In Chapter 20, Griffin uses an evocative image to explain the experience of being turned invisible to Doctor Kemp:
The pain had passed. I thought I was killing myself and I did not care. I shall never forget that dawn, and the strange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass, and watching them grow clearer and thinner as the day went by, until at last I could see the sickly disorder of my room through them, though I closed my transparent eyelids. My limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries faded, vanished, and the little white nerves went last. I gritted my teeth and stayed there to the end. At last only the dead tips of the fingernails remained, pallid and white, and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers.
The first sense that Wells appeals to is the tactile sense of pain, or rather, the absence of pain. The process of turning himself invisible hurt, but then the pain of the transformation vanished. Griffin thinks that the release of the pain is correlated with death. His apathetic attitude toward death is also an indication of an overall experience of numbness.
Griffin also uses a simile to compare his hands to "clouded glass" because the skin covering his hands became so clear that it was rapidly becoming invisible. Although, what’s inside his hands is still visible at first. In this way, Griffin's body disappears little by little. This slow, disparate disappearance has an element of horror to it. It is like he’s being dissected. All that remains at the end of the disappearance process is his “dead” fingernail tips and the stain of acid. The deadness and the stain both invoke a feeling of horror.
Related Themes:
