VOICE LESSONS: Imagery

Imagery…what is it? The use of vivid language to create a “picture” of a sensory experience. In other words: using words (often adjectives and adjective phrases) to describe what often is experiential. The goal of imagery is to recreate the sensory experience for the reader...but never, ever, on pain of death say that the imagery “paints a mental picture” for the reader. Go deeper than that!

Your FIVE Senses: use the correct terminology! Sight—visual imagery Sound—auditory imagery Touch—tactile imagery Smell—olfactory imagery Taste—gustatory imagery

How imagery happens Diction + Detail = sensory experience (very closely tied to these initial elements of voice)

Imagery and Figurative Language: the connection Imagery can be strictly literal, but sometimes a writer uses figurative language. Figurative language: Language that implies a message in a way than is not meant to be literally interpreted. Figurative language can include simile, metaphor, personification, irony, hyperbole, etc.

More on imagery & figurative language Imagery alone is NOT figurative, but writers often take the opportunity to make imagery figurative– to make the words stand for or represent something else, especially as a metaphr. Examples: The parched earth can be metaphorical for a despairing situation. The flutter of a bird’s flight can be metaphorical for hope.

Consider (from Voice Lessons) She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. ~Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Discuss Analysis: Although the narrator “looks into the distance,” the images are primarily auditory. What are the auditory images in the passage? What mood to these images create? The last sentence of this passage contains an olfactory image (the musky odor of pinks fill the air). What effect does the use of an olfactory image, after a series of auditory images, have on the reader?

Check yourself Discussion: Auditory images include her father’s voice, her sister Margaret’s voice, the barking of a dog, the spurs of a cavalry officer, and the hum of the bees. These images create a mood of loneliness. All of the images of ordinary life are in the distance, audible but not immediate. Nothing directly interacts with Edna. She is a watcher and a listener, removed from the homely action of the passage. The olfactory image brings the reader back to Edna. The auditory images are all in the distance. However, the olfactory image fills the air. It shifts the reader’s attention and concern back to Edna and her loneliness.