Imagery A
Consider:
The many men, so beautiful
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every
track
Was a flash of golden fire.
--- Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Discuss:
- These stanzas from the “the Rime of the Ancient Mariner” show the Mariner’s changing attitude
toward the creatures of the sea. What is the Marine’s attitude in the first stanza? What image reveals this attitude?
- What is the Mariner’s attitude in the second stanza? Analyze the imagery that reveals this change.
- In the first stanza, the mariner refers to the men as “beautiful.” He uses the visual and tactical
image of “ thousand slimy things” to describe the monsters. The image of the “slimy” monster suggests
a creature that is fighting disgusting and horrific.
- The mariners attitude changes to one of awe and fascination in the second stanza. Visual images such as “rich
attire” “coiled and swam” and “flash of golden fire”
demonstrates that the fact that the speaker has now turned his attention away from the dead man and noticed the fascinating
beauty of the sea monsters.
Imagery B
Consider:
And now nothing but drums, a battery
of drums, the conga drums jamming out, in a descarga, and the drummers lifting their heads and shaking under some kind
of spell. There’s rain drums, like pitter-patter but a hundred times faster, and then slamming-the-door-drums and dropping-the-bucket
drums, kicking-the-car-fender-drums. Then circus drums, then coconuts falling-out-of-the-trees-and-thumping-against-the-ground
drums, then lion-skin drums, then the wacking-of-a-hand-against-a-wall-drums, the-beating-of-a-pillow-drums, heavy-stones-against-a-wall-drums,
then the thickest-forest-tree-trunks-pounding-drums, and then the-mountain-rumble-drums, then the little-birds-learning-to-fly
drums and the big-birds-alighting-on-a-rooftop-and-fanning-their-immense-wings drums…
- Oscar Hijuelos, The Mambo
Kings Play Songs of Love
Discuss:
- Read the passage. How does Hujuelos create the auditory imagery of drumming? In other words, how do the words
imitate the sounds they represent?
- Hujuelos repeats the word then eight times in the passage. What does this repetition contribute to the
auditory image of the drumming?
In the short paragraph he uses words
such as “ a battery of drums” “conga drums jamming out” “descarga.” He uses visual words
to describe the drums. Like the sounds of the drums he uses words like “
the beating of the pillow drums” means that the drums are softer because a pillow is not hard enough to make a hard
noise.
The word then in the passage means
that there are more than just one or two types of drums that there are a lot of different types of drums like when one ends
the other one begins and that there are many different types.
Imagery C
Consider:
She
looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father’s voice
and her sister Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the
cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.
Discuss:
- Although the narrator “looks into the distance,” the images are primarily auditory. What are the
auditory images in the passage? What mood do these images create?
- The last sentence of this passage contains an olfactory image (the musky odor of pinks full the air). What
effect does the use of an olfactory image, after the series of auditory images, have on the reader?
She is afraid, but only for a moment,
and then she is fine and relaxed because the sounds and the smells calm her down. So when the old dogs are barking then there
might be someone that is not supposed to be there and everything else is calm.
It makes the reader know that everything
else is the same. Olfactory, in this story, makes the girl feel at home and that she is okay and that nothing is going to
happen. It makes us think that there is some sense of relaxation for the girl after what she has heard or what she has bee
through that might have scared her earlier that we don’t know of yet.
Imagery D
Consider:
It was a mine town, uranium most
recently. Dust devils whirled sand off the mountains. Even after the heaviest of rains, the water seeped back into the ground,
between stones, and the earth was parched again.
-Linda Hogan, “Making Do”
Discuss:
1.)
What feelings do you associate with images of dusty mountains and dry earth?
2.) These are two images
associated with land in the third sentence. Identify the two images and compare
and contrast the feelings these images evoke.
When I think of the dusty mountains
I think of a very windy place where the dust can just pick up and go until the winds stop. “Dust devils whirled”
is a sign that there are high winds and that dust is going everywhere. When I think of a dry earth I think about a place like
the desert where it is always hot and there is no water for miles and miles.
It makes me think of the world starting
over and that the earth is getting replenished when it says “the water seeped back into the ground” that there
is going to be water and there is going to be food for things and animals to eat.
Imagery E
Consider:
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells
-
T.S. Eliot, “ The Waste
Land”
Discuss:
1.)
Paraphrase the image of the first two lines. What mood does the image create?
2.)
List the auditory images in these lines. How do these images help create the mood of the passage?
The lady has long hair and she is
using it
