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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
Part 1: The Air-Ship
Explanation and Analysis—Light Like a Golden Sea:
Despite being initially resistant to traveling by air-ship to visit her son Kuno—as she prefers the comforts of her underground room run by the Machine—Vashti ultimately decides to take the trip. When describing Vashti’s experience on board the air-ship, Forster uses a simile and imagery, as seen in the following passage:
[W]hen Vashti found her cabin invaded by a rosy finger of light, she was annoyed, and tried to adjust the blind. But the blind flew up altogether, and she saw through the skylight small pink clouds, swaying against a background of blue, and as the sun crept higher, its radiance entered direct, brimming down the wall, like a golden sea. It rose and fell with the air-ship’s motion, just as waves rise and fall, but it advanced steadily, as a tide advances […] A spasm of horror shook her and she rang for the attendant.
The simile here—in which the narrator describes the sun coming through the window as “brimming down the wall, like a golden sea”—captures the beauty of this moment. Vashti has been underground—away from all natural light—for a very long time, and this is an opportunity for her to relish the splendor of being aboveground. It quickly becomes clear, however, that she is not interested in doing so; as Forster describes, using imagery, “A spasm of horror shook her.”
The juxtaposition of Vashti’s “spasm of horror” and the rich visual imagery in this passage (like “a rosy finger of light” and “small pink clouds, swaying against a background of blue”) communicates how deadened Vashti has become to the beauties of nature. After years underground, she has come to appreciate the simulation of nature over the direct experience of it. By the end of the story, of course, she does come to realize the error of her ways.
Related Themes:
Part 2: The Mending Apparatus
Explanation and Analysis—Kuno's Story:
When Kuno tells Vashti the story of how he escaped to the earth’s surface through a ventilation shaft, he uses imagery, as seen in the following passage:
The tunnels, of course, were lighted. Everything is light, artificial light; darkness is the exception. So when I saw a black gap in the tiles, I knew that it was an exception, and rejoiced […] I loosened another tile, and put in my head, and shouted into the darkness: “I am coming, I shall do it yet”, and my voice reverberated down endless passages. I seemed to hear the spirits of those dead workmen who had returned each evening to the starlight and to their wives, and all the generations who had lived in the open air called back to me.
Here Kuno uses imagery in order to help his technology-loving mother understand the beauty of being aboveground where, in his mind, humans belong. He engages different senses, helping her to see the brilliance of the black gaps in the tiles against the painful artificial light and also hear the way he shouted into the darkness “I am coming, I shall do it yet” and how it “reverberated down endless passages.” He even paints a hypothetical picture of the workmen who built the Machine “return[ing] each evening to the starlight,” imagining their voices calling back to him.
The imagery in this passage helps readers to understand how deprived the people living underground within the Machine’s control are. For example, Kuno is blown away by the mere sight of dark gaps in the wall because he has been inundated with artificial light since he was born. Nighttime and starlight are marvels to him because he has never known what it means to live in tune with nature rather than under the command of technology. This passage makes it clear that, unlike his mother, Kuno craves direct experience of reality rather than a simulation.
Related Themes:
