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Hyperbole
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
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Ten Thousand Sounds:
As Jurgis and his family arrive in Packingtown, the narrator uses auditory imagery and a simile of buzzing swarms to describe their first impressions of the place:
Then the party became aware of another strange thing. This, too, like the color, was a thing elemental; it was a sound, a sound made up of ten thousand little sounds. You scarcely noticed it at first—it sunk into your consciousness, a vague disturbance, a trouble. It was like the murmuring of the bees in the spring, the whisperings of the forest; it suggested endless activity, the rumblings of a world in motion.
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Explanation and Analysis—Oily Smoke:
When the group of Lithuanian immigrants—including Jurgis and his family—initially arrive at Packingtown, they observe a strange and new series of weather patterns and architectural shapes. The narrator employs foreshadowing, hyperbolic language, and the sensory language of sight to create a vivid and ominous atmosphere in this scene. The group sees:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] half a dozen chimneys, tall as the tallest of buildings, touching the very sky—and leaping from them half a dozen columns of smoke, thick, oily, and black as night. It might have come from the center of the world, this smoke, where the fires of the ages still smolder [...] driving all before it, a perpetual explosion. It was inexhaustible; one stared, waiting to see it stop, but still the great streams rolled out. They spread in vast clouds overhead, writhing, curling; then, uniting in one giant river, they streamed away down the sky, stretching a black pall as far as the eye could reach.
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Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Covered with Boils:
When describing the horrific conditions in some parts of the meat-packing trade, the narrator makes allusions to the works of the authors Dante Alighieri and Émile Zola. These, along with the visceral tactile imagery of the passage, provide context for the horrifying scenes at the stockyards:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] to hear this man describe the animals which came to his place would have been worthwhile for a Dante or a Zola. It seemed that they must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out old and crippled and diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had been fed on 'whisky-malt,' the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the men called 'steerly'—which means covered with boils. It was a nasty job killing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they would burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face.
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Chapter 19
Explanation and Analysis—Fertilizer Man:
Sinclair employs scent imagery to evoke pathos and highlight Jurgis's pitiful state after he has fled the scene of his wife's dangerous childbirth. As he sits in a saloon relishing its warmth, the narrator tells the reader that:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was too good to last, however—like all things in this hard world. His soaked clothing began to steam, and the horrible stench of fertilizer to fill the room. In an hour or so the packing houses would be closing and the men coming in from their work; and they would not come into a place that smelt of Jurgis.
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Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—Steel Striking:
The narrator vividly describes Jurgis's observation of a child working metal at a steelworks factory. In this passage, Sinclair uses a simile and the sensory language of sound to compare the metallic ringing of steelworking to that of a train speeding through the dark:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The sounds of the bits of steel striking upon each other was like the music of an express train as one hears it in a sleeping car at night.
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Chapter 24
Explanation and Analysis—Gleaming Apartments:
Sinclair utilizes rich, opulent visual imagery to contrast the extreme splendor of Frederick Jones's palatial apartment with Jurgis's penniless existence as a beggar. When he walks into Freddie’s apartment with the young drunkard, Jurgis sees:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] a domed ceiling from which the light poured, and walls that were one enormous painting—nymphs and dryads dancing in a flower-strewn glade [...] so real that Jurgis thought that it was some work of enchantment, that he was in a dream palace. Then his eyes passed to the long table in the center of the hall, a table black as ebony, and gleaming with wrought silver and gold. In the center of it was a huge carven bowl, with the glistening gleam of ferns and the red and purple of rare orchids, glowing from a light hidden somewhere in their midst.
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Chapter 28
Explanation and Analysis—Feverish Listener:
Toward the end of the novel, Sinclair uses tactile imagery to depict the physical excitement experienced by a wealthy lady attending a socialist rally. Jurgis, sitting uncomfortably next to her, observes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She sat as one turned to stone, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, so tightly that he could see the cords standing out in her wrists. There was a look of excitement upon her face, of tense effort, as of one struggling mightily, or witnessing a struggle. There was a faint quivering of her nostrils; and now and then she would moisten her lips with feverish haste. Her bosom rose and fell as she breathed, and her excitement seemed to mount higher and higher [...]
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