Voice Lessons: Imagery
Imagery 1
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 show the Mariner’s changing attitude toward the creatures of the sea. What is the Mariner’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.
Imagery 2
Consider: There’s rain drums, like pitter-patter 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 aloud. How does Hijuelos creae the auditory imager of drumming? In other words, how do the words imitate the sounds they represent?
What does repetition contribute to the auditory image of drumming?
Imagery 3
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. --Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Discuss: Although the narrator “looks into the distance,” the images are primarily auditory. List the auditory images used.
**What relationship with the makers of the sounds is implied by the direction of Edna’s gaze and the sources of the sounds she hears?
Imagery 4
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: What is the predominant image in this passage?
Would that image be strengthened or weakened if the base clause in the third sentence read “…the water seeped back into the ground, through the soil,…”? Support your choice.
Imagery 5
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: List the visual images in this passage. What mood do they create?
List the auditory images. What mood do they create?
Do the two sets of images complement each other, or contradict each other?
Imagery 6
Consider: …the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane [of the schoolroom] in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed.
--Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Discuss: Make a list of the visual images Dickens creates for each child.
If the sunlight can be read as a symbol of a Giver of Life, what has Dickens implied about Sissy and about Bitzer?
Imagery 7
Consider: It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. --Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Discuss: List the metaphors and similes Dickens uses in this passage.
What is his attitude toward the town, to judge by those images?
Imagery 8
Consider: A green guava is sour and hard. You bite into it at its widest point, because it’s easier to grasp with your teeth. You hear the skin, meat, and seeds crunching inside your head, while the inside of your mouth explodes in little spurts of sour.
--Esmeralda Santiago, When I was Puerto Rican
Discuss: Explain how the imagery in sentences 2 & 3 support the claim in sentence 1.
Partially adapted from Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to Teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax, and Tone, by Nancy Dean, Maupin House.2000. Used by permission.