While reading, I sometimes picture a movie playing in my head; the description makes me feel like I am actually in the scene. The detailed language used in writing is strategically placed to make sure readers understand what the writer was feeling when he or she wrote it. This type of literary device is called imagery. Booth and Mays define imagery as “sensory detail that is used to evoke a feeling or describe an object” (A6). “Dulce et Decorum Est” is full of vivid imagery that appeals to all five senses.
Imagery comes in more than one form. One category, called visual imagery, is imagery that appeals to one's sight. We want to envision what the speaker is seeing, but without sensory language it is hard to picture. Wilfred Owen guides us through “Dulce et Decorum Est” with ease as he incorporates detail into his work. In line fourteen he could easily say that the gas smothered another man near him, but instead he proclaims “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”(Line 14). I am certainly glad that Owen used this diction because it created a scene that stayed inside my head much longer than if he had taken a simpler route.
Never being at war, I cannot say for certain what combat feels like. If I had to guess, I would say it is dreadfully noisy. With bombs dropping, guns blasting, and people shouting left and right it would be hard to hear oneself think; when the author writes “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,” one can only picture how loud that had to be for someone to hear in all of that fighting (lines 21-22). These lines not only showed us the bitter sickness that the toxic gas caused, but also the harsh ending that the soldiers faced during this war.
In this poem, ...
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...ake it a struggle to put them on.
In this poem, imagery shapes what we think and what we will further believe about war based on how vividly we see it. If there were horrible pictures taken during this battle we would have been given a visual representation of it. If we were given a helmet to touch and try on we could easily understand what the soldiers physically felt during this war. Unfortunately, we cannot fully understand this war though because we cannot smell, hear, or taste this war like the soldiers did. Although in this poem all five of our senses are fed by words that help us go back in time and visit the place that is written about. Without imagery this war scene would be short, boring, and uneventful. With the overpowering description given in each line we see a more accurate depiction of war and are given an opportunity to live it as if we were there.
Imagery are words or phrases that create pictures in the mind of the reader. It is a vivid and descriptive language that appeals to one or more senses. In Romeo and Juliet, there are numerous occasions where imagery is used, specifically light and dark imagery. Romeo represents darkness as he is depressed and thinks negatively. Juliet represents light since her beauty is as bright as the sun. In William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, it is quite evident that one of the most profound forms of imagery is light and dark imagery, which is shown through the darkness of Romeo and the lightness of Juliet.
Imagery is made up of the five senses, which are sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. The first sense of sight is seen throughout the whole poem, specifically in the first two lines, “I had the idea of sitting still/while others rushed by.” This sight she envisions is so calm and still and the perfect example of appreciating the little things that life has to offer. Through the use of these terse statements, she allows it to have more meaning than some novels do as a whole.
Tim O’Brien states in his novel The Things They Carried, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat” (77). This profound statement captures not only his perspective of war from his experience in Vietnam but a collective truth about war across the ages. It is not called the art of combat without reason: this truth transcends time and can be found in the art produced and poetry written during the years of World War I. George Trakl creates beautiful images of the war in his poem “Grodek” but juxtaposes them with the harsh realities of war. Paul Nash, a World War I artist, invokes similar images in his paintings We are Making a New World and The Ypres Salient at Night. Guilaume Apollinaire’s writes about the beautiful atrocity that is war in his poem “Gala.”
Vivid imagery is one way with which writers protest war. Crane uses imagery to glorify, and shortly thereafter demean and undercut war, through the use of imagery, by placing positive and negative images of war close to eachother. “Blazing flag of the regiment,” and “the great battle God,” are placed before “A field where a thousand corpses lie.” (A) These lines’ purposes are to put images into the reader’s head, of how great war may appear, and then displaying that there are too many casualties involved with it. In Dulce Et Decorum Est, a man is described dyin...
What is war really like all together? What makes war so horrifying? The horror of war is throughout All Quiet on the Western Front. For example Albert says the war has ruined them as young people and Paul agrees. “Albert expresses it: "The war has ruined us for everything." He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.” (Remarque, Chapter 5). The way the war has affected each soldier has changed them forever. The boys who were once school boys will never be the same.
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
Imagery is when the author presents a mental image through descriptive words. One prime example of imagery that the author uses is in paragraph 3; where she tells of a moment between a man and a woman. In this narration she states the time, year, outfit of each character described, and what the female character was doing. These details might come across as irrelevant, or unnecessary, but this is Didions way of showing what the blueprint of notebook it. Using imagery reinforces the foundation of the essay, and what the essay’s mission was.
The images drawn in this poem are so graphic that it could make readers feel sick. For example, in these lines: "If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs/ Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud,"(21-23) shows us that so many men were brutally killed during this war. Also, when the gas bomb was dropped, "[s]omeone still yelling out and stumbling/ [a]nd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.../ [h]e plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning."(11-12,16) These compelling lines indicate that men drowned helplessly in the toxic gasses. These graphic images are very disturbing but play a very effective role in the development of the poem.
Imagery is a key part of any poem or literary piece and creates an illustration in the mind of the reader by using descriptive and vivid language. Olds creates a vibrant mental picture of the couple’s surroundings, “the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood/ the
Imagery is the use of symbols to convey an idea or to create a specific atmosphere for the audience. Shakespeare uses imagery in Macbeth often, the most prevalent one, is blood. I believe he uses this as a way to convey guilt, murder, betrayal, treachery and evil, and to symbolize forewarning of events.
Within the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne used imagery throughout the entire story. Hawthorne utilized imagery to help support his ideas. He was able to paint the picture of what was happening. He vividly described every detail of the novel. There are many examples found within the story
Right from the start the poem jumps in to soldiers trudging along. Owen uses metaphors in the first lines to paint the picture: “Bent double, like old beggars, coughing like hags” (1-2). He molds this image of these beat up, “drunk with fatigue” (7), exhausted soldiers walking like zombies back to their camp. You can only imagine what they have been through so far if they are this battered. Then things get even worse, they are under a gas attack. This is where the poem shifts from this slow trudge of soldiers to an “ecstasy of fumbling” (9). Once the gas hits the speaker describes it as a “green sea” of gas. As the poem progresses Owen uses less similes and starts using very graphic language that describes the scene vividly. The way the speaker describes the dead corpse is disturbing, “the white eyes writhing in his face, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” (19-21) paints a picture of this terrible, agonizing, and haunting image. It really describes the war as it truly
Imagery can be thought of as a picture painted out of words, or in other words the use of vivid details to enhance the readers views and understanding of what is happening in the story. One thing that distinguishes a good writer from an average writer is the words the writer chooses to use to describe the plot and characters. An exceptional writer does not simply tell a story; but also brings the reader immediately into the scene and provides a characterization of who the characters are in the story. Bradbury writes about a Martian terrain and environment in “Dark They Were and Golden Eyed.” Bradbury effectively describes what his character sees: “ . . . old cities, lost and lying like children 's delicate bones among the lakes of grass.” The “yellow hair” of his children “hollered at the deep dome of Martian sky. There was no answer but the racing hiss of wind through the stiff grass.” This tells the reader that there are no other people are around, so the reader gets a feeling for the loneliness and isolation of the Bittering family, and creates the atmosphere in which the story will evolve (Bradbury, “Dark They Were and Golden
The tone is bitter and intense in a realistic way. It is achieved by the vivid and gruesome images in the poem. Wilfred Owen 's use of imagery in this poem is by depicting emotional, nightmarish, and vivid words to capture the haunting encounters of WWI that soldiers went through. In the first stanza, Owen depicts his fellow soldiers struggling through the battlefield, but their terrible health conditions prevent them from their strong actions in the war. When Owen says, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags” (lines 1-2). This provides the readers with an unexpected view and appearance of soldiers, as they usually picture as strong, noble, and brawny-looking men. Soldiers sacrifice themselves to fight for their country and are exhausted from their unhealthy lifestyle. In lines 7-8, “Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots of gas-shells dropping softly behind,” they have lost the facade of humanity and their bodies are all wearied and weak on their march. This reveals a glimpse at the soldiers’ actions, as well as inferring to a psychological effect of the war. Then in line 5, “Men marched asleep,” the author is making abnormality to be one of the major purposes of the war, that it
This twenty-eight lined poem is split into four uneven stanzas, and there is distinct reference throughout the poem to a theme of claustrophobia. This is seen through Owen’s vocab choices of “…drowning…”, “…smother…” and “…under a green sea…”. This takes away the perception of war being an open and somewhat ‘free’ fight, as men were sleeping where they fought and being ordered to do things that they did not wish to do. Gone too is the idea that war is all glory; clean and properly fought. “Drunk with fatigue” is a metaphor which stirs vivid ment...