Previous
Idioms
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
The Things They Carried
Explanation and Analysis—Freedom Birds:
Toward the end of "The Things They Carried," O'Brien introduces the reader to one of the soldiers' shared fantasies: freedom birds. In a long paragraph, which teems with metaphor, simile, imagery, and alliteration, the narrator describes bird-like jets that carry the men away from Vietnam, "beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements." While this fantasy clearly appeals to the soldiers for a number of reasons, it revolves around a core dream: that of being carried rather than carrying.
In the passage, the plane is metaphorically described as a bird:
At night, on guard, staring into the dark, they were carried away by jumbo jets. They felt the rush of takeoff. Gone! they yelled. And then velocity—wings and engines—a smiling stewardess—but it was more than a plane, it was a real bird, a big sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching. They were flying.
This dream, full of light, movement, and sound, contrasts with its origin point—a soldier standing still in the dark, quiet and alone. The diction and tone seem to take off with the plane. Additionally, the passage also contains several instances of soft alliteration: jumbo jets, smiling stewardess, big sleek silver bird. As the passage continues, the dream becomes increasingly fantastical and the soldiers' relief turns into glee.
They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of wind and altitude, soaring, thinking It’s over, I’m gone!—they were naked, they were light and free—it was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the clouds and the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements.
The alliteration continues here, with a number of words starting with the letters l, b, and f. With a similar effect to the alliteration, O'Brien uses a simile to liken the soldiers' emotional and physical sensations to light and lightness. By placing war, duty, gravity, mortification and global entanglements in a single category with the clouds, he gives these intangible things a physical existence. For the soldiers, the ultimate freedom is escaping duties, obligations, and conflicts by flying up above them.
In the rest of the passage, the narrator describes the soldiers' "restful, unencumbered sensation" as "riding the light waves." Eventually, they find themselves above the United States:
[...] sailing that big silver freedom bird over the mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping cities and cemeteries and highways and the golden arches of McDonald’s, it was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing
The visual image of the men sailing the freedom bird above mountains, oceans, farms, sleeping cities, cemeteries, highways, and beyond the sun is one of the most fantastical images of The Things They Carried. It offers a notable contrast to the rest of the story, in which the men trudge along, weighed down by the war and all of the tangible items they have to carry. The narrator emphasizes, however, that it is only "at night" that the men are able "to give themselves over to lightness" and experience the sensation of being "purely borne."
Related Themes:
Spin
Explanation and Analysis—Leaky Faucet:
In "Spin," the narrator recounts a series of short anecdotes to describe his multifaceted experiences during the war. It could be "almost" sweet, funny, restful, or monotonous. However, O'Brien emphasizes that boredom could be dangerous. Using a visceral simile and tactile imagery, he describes the sensation of boredom that the soldiers often felt while waiting around:
Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. You’d be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you’d feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn’t water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you’d feel the stuff eating away at important organs.
Comparing boredom to a liquid, O'Brien gives the emotional state a physical quality: it would take over a soldier's body to the extent that they could feel it dripping inside of themselves. As he continues to develop the simile, it becomes increasingly visceral and unsettling. The dripping boredom is not simply water running through a faucet, but an acid dissolving a person from the inside. While the simile initially seems to have a neutral connotation, it eventually becomes starkly negative.
The narrator develops the danger of giving in to boredom. Just after the faucet simile, he claims that as soon as one would relax, "uncurl your fists and let your thoughts go," and think "this isn't so bad," one would hear gunfire. He suggests that being on edge at all times, not letting oneself feel bored nor relaxed, is the safest bet in war.
In later stories, the narrator and characters express a definite preference for action over boredom or stillness. For example, when O'Brien is sent to the battalion supply section after being shot for the second time, he resents being separated from the group—and from danger. In "The Ghost Soldiers," he describes this odd sort of military Stockholm syndrome. Even if he feels reasonably safe "for the first time in months," there are times when he misses "the adventure, even the danger, of the real war out in the boonies." He longs for how proximity to death makes one pay close attention to the world and feel close with the people around oneself.
Related Themes:
How to Tell a True War Story
Explanation and Analysis—Into the Light:
In a few of the stories in The Things They Carried, the narrator dwells on the moment just before someone is killed. Two such instances involve the given person stepping out of shade or fog and into the light, before evaporating or being lifted up. Developed alongside visual imagery, the transition from darkness to light—and, in parallel, life to death—becomes a motif in the collection. Although there's technically nothing supernatural going on, the force of the weapons that kill the men is described in almost magical terms. Additionally, O'Brien makes it seem as though time slows down, or even stops.
The narrator first brings up Curt Lemon in the collection's third story, "Spin." Although he develops the character in further detail later, he already tells the reader how Lemon dies in this story: "Curt Lemon steps from the shade into bright sunlight, his face brown and shining, and then he soars into a tree." From this short sentence, it's clear that Lemon's death is a rich, visual experience for O'Brien. To retain, retrieve, and recount the experience, he clings to specific visual imagery, such as the shade, the sunlight, and Lemon's face.
The narrator repeats these details in "How to Tell a True War Story," which reinforces the reader's impression that O'Brien is keenly fascinated with the visual absurdity of the memory. As he recounts Lemon's death in greater detail, he takes care to set up the scene with substantial imagery: on a nature hike, the men take a break in the shade of giant trees, "quadruple canopy, no sunlight at all," surrounded by mountains. He writes that everything is quiet, which removes the focus from the auditory level of the imagery, in favor of the visual:
There was a noise, I suppose, which must’ve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms.
In this passage, the narrator repeats some of the diction he already used in "Spin." He also adds more to the scene, dragging it out and giving the reader a more complete picture. Although it is the smoke grenade that sends his body parts into the tree, it looks as though the sunlight is what lifts him up. Later, he writes that Lemon "must’ve thought it was the sunlight that was killing him."
O'Brien clings to similar visual details when he processes killing a man in "Ambush." Once again, there's "no sound at all" leading up to the moment. As he kneels in the brush, he sees a "young man come out of the fog." O'Brien throws a grenade to make him "just evaporate." Like for Lemon, leaving the fog seems fatal—stepping into the light is tantamount to stepping into death. While darkness often has a negative connotation in the collection, this motif indicates that darkness, fog, and shade can be safer in war, as they provide valuable cover.
The narrator's memories of these two moments point to the incomprehensibility of death and how surreal it is to watch someone die. Because O'Brien struggles to wrap his head around dying and killing as it happens in the moment, these two memories became enduring visual spectacles for him. Removed from the actual events unfolding in front of him, he sees death not as death—but as being lifted up or evaporating.
Related Themes:
Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong
Explanation and Analysis—Special Forces Hootch:
"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" culminates in a rich, visceral scene in which Mary Anne sits in the Special Forces Hootch chanting in a foreign language. The passage in which O'Brien describes this scene—by way of Rat Kiley's voice—contains hyperbole, imagery, and simile. These literary devices come together to reinforce the strangeness of the scene and the mystery of Mary Anne's transformation.
At first, Rat Kiley stands outside the hootch with Eddie Diamond and Mark Fossie. At this time, the imagery is mainly auditory, as the men listen to Mary Anne's high pitched chanting and the accompanying music. When Fossie slips inside, Kiley and Diamond follow. The imagery then revolves around the sense of smell:
There was a topmost scent of joss sticks and incense, like the fumes of some exotic smokehouse, but beneath the smoke lay a deeper and much more powerful stench. Impossible to describe, Rat said. It paralyzed your lungs. Thick and numbing, like an animal’s den, a mix of blood and scorched hair and excrement and the sweet-sour odor of moldering flesh—the stink of the kill.
This part of the passage also contains hyperbole, as Kiley claims the underlying scent is "impossible to describe" and that it "paralyzed your lungs." He nevertheless makes an attempt, using a simile that likens it to an animal's den. Besides featuring many layers of figurative language, the passage contains many layers of olfactory imagery: joss sticks and incense like fumes of an exotic smokehouse, a thick and numbing stench like a mix of blood and scorched hair and excrement and moldering flesh. Through this overpowering imagery, O'Brien gives the reader an eerie and disconcerted feeling. As the scene develops further, it becomes clear where some of the more fleshly smells come from—the origin of the "the stink of the kill":
On a post at the rear of the hootch was the decayed head of a large black leopard; strips of yellow-brown skin dangled from the overhead rafters. And bones. Stacks of bones—all kinds.
This passage feels hyperbolic, and the narrator seems to push the details as far as possible. Not only does the hootch contain "all kinds" of bones, Mary Anne is even wearing a necklace of human tongues. Despite these extreme elements, Kiley insists that everything he has told until this point "is from personal experience, the exact truth."
For the reader, it's worth asking what O'Brien is suggesting through some of the more severe aspects of Mary Anne's transformation. At the beginning of the story, he makes it quite evident that coming to Vietnam is the reason why Mary Anne changes. This may simply be because Mary Anne has the chance to travel far from home for the first time. It may also be because she is captivated by fighting, weapons, covert operations, and being granted entry into a masculine sphere. However, O'Brien seems to relate her character development to a certain exoticization of Vietnam, suggesting that there is something supernatural about the landscape and culture that sets her off.
Related Themes:
Speaking of Courage
Explanation and Analysis—Deep, Oozy Soup:
In "Speaking of Courage," Bowker drives around the lake in his hometown, thinking back to the night Kiowa died. He uses metaphor and imagery to liken the swampy field to a boiling soup. Throughout the story, the field in his flashback contrasts with the lake next to him. At times, the two seem to flow into each other, as past intermingles with present in Bowker's thoughts and in the narration.
The narrator delivers Bowker's flashback through his imagined dialogue—what he would have told his high school girlfriend Sally if she weren't married, or his dad if he weren't busy watching baseball on TV. He thinks about how he would begin the story about Kiowa's death by describing how "it never stopped raining" and that there was muck "everywhere." Intimately accessing Bowker's thoughts, the narrator explains that "by midnight the field turned into soup":
“Just this deep, oozy soup,” he would’ve said. “Like sewage or something. Thick and mushy. You couldn’t sleep. You couldn’t even lie down, not for long, because you’d start to sink under the soup. Real clammy. You could feel the crud coming up inside your boots and pants.”
The metaphorical language and imagery in this passage give the reader a multisensory impression of the night in Bowker's flashback. By comparing the field to soup, O'Brien illustrates some of its visual aspects, but also the heat, texture, motion, and smell. The oozing field seems to prepare to swallow up the men. As Bowker continues his hypothetical narration of the story, he fixates even more on the field's soupy qualities: "The way the earth bubbled. And the smell."
When the field is bombarded, the metaphorical soup's temperature seems to increase rapidly, as the field goes from oozing to boiling.
The field was boiling. The shells made deep slushy craters, opening up all those years of waste, centuries worth, and the smell came bubbling out of the earth.
The reader receives Bowker's flashbacks to the field by the river alongside the narrator's descriptions of the lake he keeps circling around. As the story progresses, the two become more and more associated. Like the field, the lake is hot and disgusting—"often filthy and algaed." Another parallel comes from the date: it is July 4th, and the town is preparing for its annual firework display. Just as the soldiers took mortar fire when they bivouacked in the field, the lake will witness explosions of its own later that evening.
In the story, Bowker thinks about how he could lecture the people in his town on feces: "The smell, in particular, but also the numerous varieties of texture and taste." On the gruesome evening in his flashback, the muck of the field filled his nose and mouth. Just before the story ends, he links the field of the flashback with the lake of his current surroundings one final time, by going out into the lake and tasting the water:
After a time he got out, walked down to the beach, and waded into the lake without undressing. The water felt warm against his skin. He put his head under. He opened his lips, very slightly, for the taste, then he stood up and folded his arms and watched the fireworks.
In this touching conclusion, Bowker puts an end to his never-ending circles around the lake, and actually gets into it. The narrator leaves it implicit that, as he opens his mouth, he thinks back to the horrible stink and taste of the field on the night Kiowa died. In addition, the fireworks above him evoke the mortar fire that made the field boil like soup.
Related Themes:
