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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—Signalman's Conditions:
Throughout the short story, Dickens utilizes detailed descriptions to make readers feel a deep connection with the frightening surroundings he describes. For example, when describing the signalman’s post, Dickens provides intense sensory descriptions to emphasize the overpowering unpleasantness of the man's working conditions:
On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.
The narrator evokes feelings of discomfort with tactile descriptions of the wet stone and cold, oppressive air. Furthermore, his olfactory descriptions further impress upon the reader the invasive sensory unease of the signalman’s post. By invoking the imagery of a dungeon, the author possibly alludes to the castle settings of many earlier Gothic novels and insinuates that this post is entrapping and harmful. The suffocating description of the narrator's limited view adds to this trapped feeling. In conjunction with this, the association with death and the unnatural connects the post with hell, establishing that the signalman’s post is an inescapable torture. The emphasis on the darkness of the tunnel and overall area builds suspense by suggesting that something is hiding within this darkness.
Related Themes:
