Definition of Imagery
In Chapter 13, Jordan takes the time to describe in detail the various sensations he experiences at Maria's touch. She is a grounding force for him, a person who possesses the ability to pull him away from his negative musings. Hemingway conveys these emotions through sensory imagery:
[Maria's] fingers and her wrist to his that was as fresh as the first light air that came moving towards you that moving toward you over the sea barely wrinkles the surface of a calm, as light as a feather moved across one's lip, or a leaf falling when there is no breeze.
In an instance of sensory imagery from Chapter 14, Jordan describes the typical sensations of the battlefield. He reminisces about the atmosphere of battle in particular, describing how the surrounding environment impacts the body and the mind:
Unlock with LitCharts A+There is a wind that blows through battle but that was a hot wind; hot and dry as your mouth; and it blew heavily; hot and dirtily; and it rose and died away with the fortunes of the day. He knew that wind well.
In the following passage from Chapter 20, Hemingway utilizes a smorgasbord of sensory imagery to convey the various feelings Jordan associates with the places he's visited and lived.
Unlock with LitCharts A+This is the smell I love. This and fresh-cut clover, the crushed sage as you ride after cattle, wood-smoke and the burning leaves of autumn. That must be the odor of nostalgia, the smell of the smoke from the piles of raked leaves burning in the streets in the fall in Missoula. Which would you rather smell? Sweet grass the Indians used in their baskets? Smoked leather? The odor of the ground in the spring after rain? The smell of the sea as you walk through the gorse on a headland in Galicia? Or the wind from the land as you come in toward Cuba in the dark?