Previous
Idioms
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—Sorrowful Weight:
In Chapter 2, Jack continues to describe his family's home. It is full of stuff—consumer goods of all types with seemingly no purpose, tucked away into countless boxes. These boxes will stay in their house throughout the novel and their reactions to them will change over time. Here, in the first reference to them, Jack uses imagery to compare the objects' physical weight to their emotional weight:
[...] we regard the rest of the house as storage space for furniture, toys, all the unused objects of earlier marriages and different sets of children, the gifts of lost in-laws, the hand-me-downs and rummages. Things, boxes. Why do these possessions carry such sorrowful weight? There is a darkness attached to them, a foreboding. They make me wary not of personal failure and defeat but of something more general, something large in scope and content.
The boxes carry a "sorrowful weight." Just as they are literally heavy, they also weigh on Jack's and his family's souls. Jack feels ashamed of the overconsumption clogging up his home. Jack's "personal failure" and general malaise feel just as "large in scope and content" as the boxes themselves. Thus the boxes are not only the source of Jack's unhappiness but are also used as imagery to describe that unhappiness.
Later, in Chapter 29 after the Airborne Toxic Event, Jack feels that his life and health are out of his control in the wake of such an extreme natural disaster. Several visits to his doctor confirm that Jack is fine, but still, in an attempt to wrest control of his life, he starts throwing things away:
Things in the top and bottom of my closet, things in boxes in the basement and attic. I threw away correspondence, old paperbacks, magazines I’d been saving to read, pencils that needed sharpening. I threw away tennis shoes, sweat socks, gloves with ragged fingers, old belts and neckties. I came upon stacks of student reports, broken rods for the seats of director’s chairs. I threw these away. I threw away every aerosol can that didn’t have a top.
The reader can imagine that all these many items made up the "sorrowful weight" from before. In the first reference to the boxes in Chapter 2, Jack doesn't know quite what feeling the boxes give him; he can only call it "something more general." But when Jack throws away contents of the boxes after the Airborne Toxic Event, it is clear that the overflowing stuff amplifies Jack's fear of death. When Jack fears most that he will die, he overcomes his shame around the boxes from earlier in the novel and throws things away in an attempt to feel control. But while Jack can control the objects in his house, radically increasing and decreasing their quantity often, he repeatedly finds that his own life and health are far beyond his ability to control.
Related Themes:
Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Sorrowful Weight:
In Chapter 2, Jack continues to describe his family's home. It is full of stuff—consumer goods of all types with seemingly no purpose, tucked away into countless boxes. These boxes will stay in their house throughout the novel and their reactions to them will change over time. Here, in the first reference to them, Jack uses imagery to compare the objects' physical weight to their emotional weight:
[...] we regard the rest of the house as storage space for furniture, toys, all the unused objects of earlier marriages and different sets of children, the gifts of lost in-laws, the hand-me-downs and rummages. Things, boxes. Why do these possessions carry such sorrowful weight? There is a darkness attached to them, a foreboding. They make me wary not of personal failure and defeat but of something more general, something large in scope and content.
The boxes carry a "sorrowful weight." Just as they are literally heavy, they also weigh on Jack's and his family's souls. Jack feels ashamed of the overconsumption clogging up his home. Jack's "personal failure" and general malaise feel just as "large in scope and content" as the boxes themselves. Thus the boxes are not only the source of Jack's unhappiness but are also used as imagery to describe that unhappiness.
Later, in Chapter 29 after the Airborne Toxic Event, Jack feels that his life and health are out of his control in the wake of such an extreme natural disaster. Several visits to his doctor confirm that Jack is fine, but still, in an attempt to wrest control of his life, he starts throwing things away:
Things in the top and bottom of my closet, things in boxes in the basement and attic. I threw away correspondence, old paperbacks, magazines I’d been saving to read, pencils that needed sharpening. I threw away tennis shoes, sweat socks, gloves with ragged fingers, old belts and neckties. I came upon stacks of student reports, broken rods for the seats of director’s chairs. I threw these away. I threw away every aerosol can that didn’t have a top.
The reader can imagine that all these many items made up the "sorrowful weight" from before. In the first reference to the boxes in Chapter 2, Jack doesn't know quite what feeling the boxes give him; he can only call it "something more general." But when Jack throws away contents of the boxes after the Airborne Toxic Event, it is clear that the overflowing stuff amplifies Jack's fear of death. When Jack fears most that he will die, he overcomes his shame around the boxes from earlier in the novel and throws things away in an attempt to feel control. But while Jack can control the objects in his house, radically increasing and decreasing their quantity often, he repeatedly finds that his own life and health are far beyond his ability to control.
Related Themes:
Chapter 30
Explanation and Analysis—Panic, Half Goat:
At the beginning of Chapter 30, Jack wakes in the night in acute panic, terrified of the effects of Dylar and filled with homicidal rage toward Mr. Gray. Jack describes how his fear makes him feel small using visual imagery, while making an allusion to ancient Greek mythology:
In the dark the mind runs on like a devouring machine, the only thing awake in the universe. I tried to make out the walls, the dresser in the corner. It was the old defenseless feeling. Small, weak, deathbound, alone. Panic, the god of woods and wilderness, half goat. I moved my head to the right, remembering the clock-radio. I watched the numbers change, the progression of digital minutes, odd to even. They glowed green in the dark.
In a moment with which many readers might be familiar, Jack wakes in the night and looks around the room, feeling trapped by his racing mind. "The old defenseless feeling" makes him feel physically smaller and impotent: "Small, weak, deathbound, alone." Jack describes himself this way while in reality he is still altogether healthy; as often in the novel, his fear diminishes him into something less than human.
As part of this strange imagery bordering on hallucination, Jack refers to "Panic, the god of woods and wilderness, half goat." Jack is talking about Pan, the god of nature and wildlife, from Greek mythology. The English word "panic" originally derives from a Greek word meaning "pertaining to Pan," as it was believed that Pan's presence created mysterious sounds and smells that would startle livestock into a panic. Similarly, Jack is so anxious in this moment that he feels as if Pan, the "half goat," hovers just near him, possibly causing his panic and weakness. Then, however, Jack snaps back to his unpleasant reality and the consumer gadgets around him. The clock radio and the slow progression of time draw Jack away from his imagination and back to his real, anxious life. Before this can happen, though, the imagery and allusion show how Jack's fear of death causes him so much inner strife that he experiences panic.
Related Themes:
