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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
Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Bright-Towered:
In this passage from the very beginning of the story, the author uses visual and auditory imagery to bring to life a fresh summer morning. Le Guin begins with a description that immerses the reader in the excited, apparently happy ambiance of Omelas during its most joyous season:
With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The ringing of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved.
The visual imagery in this excerpt gives a powerful impression of a vibrant and colorful city preparing for the best time in its calendar year. The phrase "bright-towered by the sea" sounds as though it comes from a medieval romance, an image that’s enhanced by the "sparkling" harbor adorned with flags. The city’s "houses with red roofs and painted walls" add to the bright palette of green, gold, and white Le Guin conjures in the first paragraphs of the story. All seems well-maintained and cheerful, almost too good to be true.
The auditory imagery echoes this too-perfect visual language, working to deepen the reader's immersion in Le Guin’s world-building. Everything in Omelas seems to be connected. The "clamor of bells" doesn’t just send “swallows soaring,” it seems to shimmer through the whole city. The boats in the harbor “ring” too, making the air of Omelas seem as though it’s full of joyful sounds. This use of auditory imagery helps convey the scale of the Summer Festival and also show how totalizing it is. It’s not just happening in Omelas: the city itself has become an enormous and idealized celebration.
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Explanation and Analysis—White-Gold Fire:
As she sets the scene for the rest of the tale, the author uses visual imagery to emphasize the pristine, mythical quality of the landscape around Omelas. Everything about the city is bright and beautiful, from the “air of morning” its citizens breathe to the distant mountains on the horizon:
The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky.
The visual imagery here gives the reader an impression of Omelas as an enchantingly clean and crisp city. It’s a true utopia, almost supernaturally untouched by grime, crime, or the mess of everyday life. Elements of natural beauty that seem to defy physics can co-exist here: it’s the time of the Summer Festival, but there’s still visible snow on the mountains in the distance. This description of the "snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks" that "burned with white-gold fire" is like a Renaissance painting, conjuring conventional imagery of white and gold, purity and power. This vision of pure snow and golden sunshine under the "dark blue of the sky" is also a striking visual contrast, painting a bold picture for the reader. They are charmed by the beauty and drawn into the fairy-tale setting, which sets the stage for the ethical dilemma at the center of the story. Were Omelas less beautiful and perfect, it would be even more difficult to justify the suffering of the scapegoat child. These descriptions also make the "darkness" outside the city seem even more foreboding.
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Explanation and Analysis—I Will Be Good:
The narrator appeals to the reader’s sense of pathos as they describe the pitiful sounds the imprisoned scapegoat child makes. The auditory imagery of this harrowing passage brings the tortured child’s ordeal to life for the reader:
The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often.
This passage makes the reader feel complicit in listening to the scapegoat child's desperate pleas and the utter neglect it faces. The child’s remembered experiences of sunlight and its mother’s voice make the darkness and isolation it’s forced to live in feel far worse. It has known happiness but is now utterly alone and unloved. Part of the appeal to pathos here also comes from the fact that the child’s imprisonment is never explained to it: it begs to be released, promising it "will be good" and screaming for help. Because it doesn’t know why it has been imprisoned, it tries anything it can to make its jailers let it out. The sounds of the child's diminishing pleas and its shift from screaming to the weak, plaintive whining "eh-haa, eh-haa" are rendered in painfully detailed, realistic language. These sounds, especially in the way they hopelessly decline, make the cruelty afoot in Omelas all the more immediate and distressing for the reader.
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