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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—The Police Car:
Near the end of the story, an automated police car stops Mead on the street and chastises him for walking in his own neighborhood at night, ultimately forcing Mead to get inside so the car can take him to a psychiatric facility for people with “regressive tendencies.” Bradbury captures Mead’s experience of the inside of the police car using imagery, as seen in the following passage:
He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there.
Bradbury uses a variety of sensory language to communicate the sterile nature of the backseat of the car. Descriptions of the smell as being like “riveted steel,” “harsh antiseptic,” and “too clean and hard and metallic” help readers to experience the sterility at an olfactory level. The detail that “there was nothing soft” in the backseat likewise helps readers to feel the cold harshness of the space, and the description of the backseat as “a little black jail with bars” helps them to picture it.
It is likely that Bradbury pauses to capture the details here in order to help readers understand just how unsettling, sterile, and jail-like the backseat of the police car is when compared to the expansiveness and organic nature of the outdoors, which Mead loves so much. It also communicates how technology (as seen in the automated nature of the police car) and dehumanization go hand-in-hand in the world of the story.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Leonard’s Walk:
Near the beginning of the story, while capturing the sights and sounds that Mead notices on his evening stroll through his neighborhood, Bradbury uses imagery, as seen in the following passage:
He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.
In this passage, Bradbury uses imagery to engage several different senses at once. Readers can hear the “faint push of [Mead’s] soft shoes through the autumn leaves” as well as hear how he “whistle[s] a cold quiet whistle between his teeth.” They can also see the "skeletal pattern” of the leaf Mead picks up beneath the lamplight and smell the leaf’s “rusty smell.”
The imagery here brings readers more closely into the scene, helping them to understand why Mead enjoys his evening walks so much. It’s clear from this passage that Mead doesn’t walk for the exercise, but for the different sensory experiences that walking offers him, as well as the closeness to nature it brings him (as seen in his examination of the leaf).
This moment is significant because it offers readers a visceral explanation for why Mead refuses to follow the rules of his repressive society—he loves the sights and sounds of the outside world and, unlike the masses of people sitting in front of their "viewing screens," he refuses to be cut off from it.
Related Themes:
