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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
The Window, 9
Explanation and Analysis—The Ramsay Portrait:
Throughout the novel, as characters come and go and even die, Lily Briscoe continues work on her painting of the Ramsays. She gets off to a rocky start, however, and conveys as much through a combination of imagery, metaphor, and allegory in Chapter 9 of "The Window":
She could have wept…. it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course, the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealized; that was how Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly's wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marks scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen… and there was Mr. Tansley whispering in her ear, 'Women can't paint, women can't write...'
Related Themes:
The Window, 19
Explanation and Analysis—Mrs. Ramsay's Inner Ocean:
After the climactic dinner party in Chapter 19 of "The Window," Mrs. Ramsay gradually begins to reflect on the dinner conversation. She conveys her thoughts on the night through a beautiful combination of visual imagery and metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And she waited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly those words they had said at dinner, 'the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the honey bee,' began washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind...
Related Themes:
Time Passes, 10
Explanation and Analysis—The Murmur of the Sea:
In "Time Passes," the middle portion of To the Lighthouse, the timescale of the novel abruptly zooms out from the thought-to-thought stream of "The Window" to a grand, practically geologic, scale. The narrator meditates on the environment throughout this section, and how it varyingly changes and remains constant amid the passage of time. In Chapter 10 of "Time Passes," Woolf uses sound imagery and personification to characterize the sea after the conclusion of World War I:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely to confirm — what else was it murmuring — as Lily Briscoe laid her head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said — but what mattered if the meaning were plain?
