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Imagery Examples

The document discusses imagery in literature. It defines imagery as the author's use of descriptive language that appeals to the reader's senses to represent ideas, actions, and entities. Imagery creates mental images for the reader and makes the writing more vivid. There are different types of imagery, including visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, kinesthetic, and organic imagery, each relating to a different sense. Examples are provided to illustrate how authors use words to create imagery that engages the senses.

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Joseph Balasingham
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970 views3 pages

Imagery Examples

The document discusses imagery in literature. It defines imagery as the author's use of descriptive language that appeals to the reader's senses to represent ideas, actions, and entities. Imagery creates mental images for the reader and makes the writing more vivid. There are different types of imagery, including visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, kinesthetic, and organic imagery, each relating to a different sense. Examples are provided to illustrate how authors use words to create imagery that engages the senses.

Uploaded by

Joseph Balasingham
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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EnglishLiterary Response
Imagery

Imagery is the author’s use of descriptive and figurative language to represent ideas, actions and
entities in a way that it appeals to a reader’s physical sense. The novelist uses words and phrases
to create “mental images” for the reader. Imagery is one of the strongest strategies in literature.
The author’s writings are visualized more realistically with the help of Imagery. Imagery
awakens the reader’s sensory insights by using allusions, descriptive words,
metaphors,personification and similes etc.

What is Imagery?
The figurative or descriptive language in a literary work or pictorial images and formation of
mental images, figures, or rhetorical images by the action of imagination is referred to as Imagery.
Imagery ignites the visual, kinesthetic, gustatory, thermal and auditory sensations in a
reader.Imagery refers to imaginative or mental pictures that make use of certain words that create
pictorial representation of ideas in minds of the reader.

Imagery brings in lifelike quality to characters or sceneries in a written work, supporting the
reader's imagination. The two main types of language used in literature are: descriptive language
and figurative language. Descriptive language allures directly to the senses, however figurative
language uses more elusive and refined descriptions and frequently appeals meanings or themes of
a work. Both types of language are used to create imagery in literature.

Examples of Imagery:
It was dark and shadowy in the forest. – The words “dark” and “shadowy” are visual
images.
The children were screaming and yelling in the fields. – The words “Screaming” and
“yelling” appeal to sense of hearing or auditory sense.
He whiffed the aroma of brewed coffee. – “whiff” and “aroma” induce sense of smell or
olfactory sense.
The girl ran her hands on a soft satin fabric. – The word “soft” appeals to the sense of touch or
tactile sense.
The fresh and juicy oranges are very cold and sweet. – “juicy” and “sweet” oranges have an
effect on our sense of taste or gustatory sense.

Types of Imagery
Imagery often makes writing more fascinating through the use of sensual details and adds to
deeper symbolic meaning to the text alluring to all senses. Imagery is not defined to visual
imagery; it includes olfactory (smell), auditory (sound), gustatory (taste), tactile (touch), thermal
(heat and cold), and kinesthetic sensation (movement).

Visual Imagery: relating to visual scenes, graphics, pictures, or the sense of sight.
Example:
The clouds were low and hairy like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
The iced branches shed ‘crystal shells.’
Auditory Imagery: relating to sounds, noises, music, sense of hearing or choosing words with a
sound that imitates real sounds in the form of onomatopoeia. Words such as “bang!”
“achoo!” “cacaw!” "buzz!" all work to describe sounds that most people are familiar with.
Onomatopoeia is used mostly in poetry, but has its function in prose.
Example:
Joanna, the minute she set her eyes on him, let loose the scream of her life.
The rumbling sound of clouds, indicated start of monsoon.
Olfactory Imagery: is concerning aromas, smell, odors, scents, or the sense of smell.
Example:
She smelled as sweet as roses.
I was awakened by the strong smell of a freshly brewed coffee.
Gustatory Imagery: pertains to tastes, flavors, palates or the sense of taste.
Example:
Christina served the bland sea-prawns pasta with the sweet mariana sauce.
Joshua touched the naked wire. It was the biggest mistake of his life.
Tactile Imagery: is concerning physical touches, textures or the sense of touch.
Example:
The cold water touched his skin and he felt a shudder run down his spine.
Chloe came running and touched every nook and corner of my face with her slobbering tongue.
Kinesthetic Imagery: pertains to movements or the sense of bodily motion.
Example:
Ange's heartbeat was so loud, she felt it could be heard across the room.
The clay oozed between Jacob's fingers as he let out a squeal of pure glee.
Organic Imagery or Subjective Imagery: are the personal experiences of a character's physique,
body, including emotion and the senses of hunger, thirst, fatigue, sickness, agony and pain.
Example: Life is too much like a pathless wood.
Exercise
Consider the following imagery sentences and highlight the forms of Imagery used:
The miniature thunders the clatter of stone.
The rooster crowed at early dawn, a sign that it was time to start the day.
So love will take between the hands and face.
Musk from hidden grapevine springs.
Is your mouth watering yet?
Sarah placed her bare hand on the cold snow.
Jason is about to bite into a delicious cupcake, stifled in chocolate frosting.
The walking boots that taste of Atlantic and Pacific salt.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
The sweet scent of maple wafted through the room.
Clang of pots and pans signaled that breakfast was almost ready
The sweet smell of roasted marshmallows filled the air.
Her hair grazed across my shoulder, tickling me.
The deep blue hues of twilight were reflected in the still water.

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