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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 II: Interlude
Explanation and Analysis—Stray Bullet:
In the Interlude, the narrator describes how shootings can happen anywhere. No one expected a calamitous event to happen at the powwow, but shootings are random, terrible events. Orange uses some violent imagery, followed by a simile, to describe a bullet in such a shooting:
A bullet is a thing so fast it’s hot and so hot it’s mean and so straight it moves clean through a body, makes a hole, tears, burns, exits, goes on, hungry, or it remains, cools, lodges, poisons. When a bullet opens you up, blood pours like out of a mouth too full. A stray bullet, like a stray dog, might up and bite anyone anywhere, just because its teeth were made to bite, made to soften, tear through meat, a bullet is made to eat through as much as it can.
The passage above begins with terrible imagery of a bullet tearing through a body. The description endows the bullet with an unexpected amount of agency. Orange uses many active verbs associated with the bullet: it "burns, exits, goes on," etc. These verbs depict the bullet as an active being making choices, which adds energy to the imagery of the bullet. This imagery emphasizes the physical consequences of mass shootings in evocative fashion.
The simile later in the passage compares a stray bullet to a stray dog. This emphasizes the fact that shootings can happen at any time, as random events, arriving like a stray animal. This also serves to emphasize the active choice that Orange ascribes to the bullet, comparing it to an animal with teeth made to "tear through meat."
Part III: Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield (2)
Explanation and Analysis—Bored a Hole:
In a chapter on Opal in Part III, the narrator describes Opal's obsessions and superstitions, as well as her long history of regrets. After the previous chapter, which shows her as a young woman with a variety of unusual behaviors, this chapter shows her as an older woman with many memories and experiences. The narrator describes these in a metaphor:
So she bore those years, their weight, and the years bored a hole through the middle of her, where she tried to keep believing there was some reason to keep her love intact. Opal is stone solid, but there is troubled water that lives in her, that sometimes threatens to flood, to drown her—rise up to her eyes. Sometimes she can’t move. Sometimes it feels impossible to do anything.
Opal carried all her years like a weighty object, which has now "bored a hole through the middle of her." Then the narrator continues to describe this hole. There are two important parts of this metaphor. First, the narrator considers the weightiness of Opal's regret, that she is "stone solid." But this contrasts with the other metaphor, that there is "troubled water" inside Opal as well. In sum, these varied metaphors show the complexity of Opal's emotions. These highly image-driven metaphors are also quite typical of the clipped writing style the author uses to describe deep and complex emotions.
Related Themes:
