Imagery In Daphne Du Maurier's The Birds

Imagine someone looking to their right, and being met with the sight of a beautiful meadow, flowers swaying from the soft breeze of the clear blue sky, the sun shining brightly in the distance. Said someone widens their eyes, and concentrates hard on their surroundings, to the point where it feels like they’re one with nature. Now suddenly, the scene changes, as the person is now, this time around, turning to their left, and seeing a dark, gloomy, night sky, dead plants and birds littered across the dirty path ahead. Would they feel any different? Similar to this figurative situation, the short story “The Birds”, by Daphne du Maurier perfectly captures how the use of imagery affects human emotions. Her descriptive language regarding the weather,

Du Maurier uses imagery to create a suspenseful mood, when she states, "Something black rose from behind them, like a smudge at first, then widening, becoming deeper, and the smudge became a cloud, and the cloud divided again into five other clouds... and they were not clouds at all; they were birds" (du Maurier 63). This line creates a suspenseful mood, as the readers, who previously thought the birds were clouds, begin to wonder what the creatures are doing. In addition, it also makes the readers a bit scared for Nat and Jill, since they now know the birds are there, leaving the reader feeling a bit worried if he was going to save her from the birds in time. In addition to the suspenseful mood this quote gives, as stated in paragraph two, the color black is typically associated with death and darkness. These three factors leaves us biting at our fingernails, as we anticipate what's going to happen

Whether it be a description of the weather and the trees, the night sky, or the birds themselves, du Maurier manages to flip the story's mood in an instant, all with just a few, simple words. With imagery, the reader is able to imagine what the scenery of a story is like, and unknowingly, it can shape your emotions completely, making the reader feel happy one second, and sad the next. Even by just looking outside right now, it's clear to see that a dark, pitch black sky would make someone feel completely different than something more soothing, like a pink, pretty sunset. As once stated by Tracy Sabin, "Creating visual imagery is a state of mind. It involves the reproduction of what we see. But much more than that, it becomes an outlet to express feelings about what we experience." While in this quote it states that authors use imagery in a sort of diary like fashion, it is thew reader's job to put their words into picture and make their text create something actually meaningful. It is their obligation as readers to take these words of imagery and actually imagine. To picture. To understand. To