6.3 Imagery
Imagery in a text can be found in a straightforward description containing adjectivals and adverbials, with a careful selection of nouns and verbs or noun and verb groups but it also refers to the use of rhetorical devices in a text. (See Part 5, 5.5, for these latter.)
Example:
At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through
the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Then
the green things began to show buds, began to unfurl and show colour, every
shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson.
(Frances Hodgson Burnet: The
Secret Garden, pp.199-200.)
Analysis:
Hodgson Burnet’s description of the garden (use of imagery) turns it into a living, wondrous place of gradual change and beauty. First of all, she introduces the buds, the green buds. The mind’s eye follows her voice like a camera over a long series of adverbials of place: through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. She enables the reader to see a plethora of new life surging upwards everywhere, and then the transformation of this new life awash with colour - the blue, the purple and the crimson. Three complex verb groups with their specific actions add to the richness and profusion: ‘began to show buds, began to unfurl, and [began to ] show colour’ and the word, ‘colour’ is defined by the use of three noun groups: ‘every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson.’