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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 1
Explanation and Analysis—Hampden College:
When Richard first arrives on the Hampden campus, he describes the New England nature and university architecture with sensory imagery:
Trees creaking with apples, fallen apples red on the grass beneath, the heavy sweet smell of apples rotting on the ground and the steady thrumming of wasps around them. Commons clock tower: ivied brick, white spire, spellbound in the hazy distance. The shock of first seeing a birch tree at night, rising up in the dark as cool and slim as a ghost. And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty and enormous, disordered and wild with stars.
This imagery serves as one of the first descriptions of Hampden College, incorporating senses such as smell, sight, and touch. Richard paints the apples as red with a sweet rotting smell, while the clock tower is a "white spire" in the distance. Already, the imagery injects carnage into the novel, foreshadowing the mysteries that Richard will encounter at Hampden. The rotting apples are reminiscent of the rotting bodies the Greek students leave in their wake.
The nights are "black and gusty," "wild with stars," evoking a certain barbarity and lawlessness in which Richard will soon take part. The gusty nights imply a lack of control, particularly up against the ferocity of nature and fate. Similarly, the Greek students spend so much time and energy hiding their secrets, but in the end, they are unable to control other people's curiosity.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Country House:
When Richard first visits Francis's country house, he becomes captivated by its richness not only in style but also in color. He uses sensory imagery to bring the country house to life in the reader's mind:
The creak of the swing, or the pattern of the clematis vines on the trellis, or the velvety swell of land as it faded to gray on the horizon, and the strip of highway visible—just barely—in the hills, beyond the trees. The very colors of the place had seeped into my blood: […] the country house first appeared as a glorious blur of watercolors, of ivory and lapis blue, chestnut and burnt orange and gold, separating only gradually into the boundaries of remembered objects: the house, the sky, the maple trees. But even that day, there on the porch, with Charles beside me and the smell of wood smoke in the air, it had the quality of a memory.
At first glance, Richard is enamored by the country house, a property that is strikingly different from his own home in California. Seeing the minute details of the vines and the horizon make him fall in love with Vermont even more. Yet, the enchanting nature of the country house only allows Richard to become blind to the suspicious activities of the Greek students.
Richard describes the house as a beautiful jumble of watercolors that become "remembered objects" the closer he approaches. Ironically, an actual watercolor painting would require the viewer to step farther away for a clearer picture. When Richard compares the smells, sounds, and colors of the country house to a memory, he also demonstrates how he longs to have been raised in a place like this. By associating himself with the Greek students and unconditionally following them, Richard hopes that he can reinvent himself entirely.
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Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Bone-Cracking Cold:
While trying to survive the winter without heating, Richard nearly freezes to death. To describe his tortured conditions, Richard uses very physical imagery:
Bone-cracking cold that made my joints ache, cold so relentless I felt it in my dreams: ice floes, lost expeditions, the lights of search planes swinging over whitecaps as I floundered alone in black Arctic seas. In the morning, when I woke, I was as stiff and sore as if I’d been beaten. I thought it was because I was sleeping on the floor. Only later did I realize that the true cause of this malady was hard, merciless shivering, my muscles contracting as mechanically as if by electric impulse, all night long, every night.
Through the imagery, Richard describes both his living conditions and his own physical condition while living without heating in the dead of winter. The reader can feel the cold not through scenic descriptions, but instead through the feelings that Richard describes in his body: the bone-cracking, the aching, the shivering, the stiffness. Even in his dreams, Richard cannot escape the cold, as they are plagued with images of ice floes and Arctic seas.
The irony of Richard’s entire winter experience is the idiocy of it— while he is an expert in Ancient Greek, he cannot fathom the idea of getting heaters or asking Dr. Roland for help. Unfortunately, then, Richard is largely responsible for his own misery and discomfort.
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Explanation and Analysis—Beauty is Terror:
While most of Richard's tortured winter in Vermont is full of dangerous weather and unsuitable living conditions, he does not fail to notice the majesty of his surroundings. He uses vivid imagery to describe these surroundings and, in doing so, taps into a motif in which beauty and terror are inextricably linked:
I would then lean over the icy railing and drop it into the rapid current that bubbled over the speckled dinosaur eggs of granite which made up its bed—a gift to the river-god, maybe, for safe crossing, or perhaps some attempt to prove to it that I, though invisible, did exist. The water ran so shallow and clear in places that sometimes I heard the dropped stone click as it hit the bed. Both hands on the icy rail, staring down at the water as it dashed white against the boulders, boiled thinly over the polished stones, I wondered what it would be like to fall and break my head open on one of those bright rocks: a wicked crack, a sudden limpness, then veins of red marbling the glassy water.
Richard uses beautifully specific and full imagery to invoke the senses, with the click of the stones against the bed and the texture of the water as it dashes against different surfaces. These sensory descriptions bring the harsh but beautiful environment to life, drawing readers more fully into the setting. And as Richard paints this vivid picture ("veins of red marbling the glassy water"), readers begin to get the sense that he's especially capable of recognizing moments of beauty in otherwise brutal situations—a capacity that reemerges in the novel when Henry describes the transcendent experience of losing himself during the Dionysian ritual and committing a horrific act of violence.
To that end, the connection between beauty and horror forms a motif throughout the novel. Julian emphasizes this idea early on, telling his Greek students that "beauty is terror." He talks about how terrifying but beautiful it is to utterly lose control, which is exactly what Henry seems to experience on the night of the murder. This same terrifying loss of control is perhaps what Richard is thinking about when he imagines falling into the river—after all, this would be a sort of letting go, and though breaking his head open would be undoubtedly horrific, he seems to find some beauty in the idea when he imagines his own blood "marbling the glassy water."
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