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Imagery
• Describing imagery as the use of figurative language to create
DEFINITION descriptions that engage the physical senses.
What is imagery? Here’s a quick and simple definition:
Both are wrong.
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language
that engages the human senses. For instance, the following A Quick Definition of Figur
Figuraativ
tivee Languag
Languagee
lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain Figurative language is language that creates a meaning that is
imagery that engages the senses of touch, movement, and different from the literal interpretation of the words. For instance, the
hearing: "I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. / And I phrase "you are my sunshine" is figurative language (a metaphor, to
keep hearing from the cellar bin / The rumbling sound / Of be precise). It's not literally saying that you are a beam of light from
load on load of apples coming in." the sun, but rather is creating an association between "you" and
"sunshine" to say that you make the speaker feel warm and happy
Some additional key details about imagery: and also give the speaker life in the same way sunshine does.
• Though imagery contains the word "image," it does not only refer
to descriptive language that appeals to the sense of sight. Imag
Imager
eryy ccan
an be Lit
Liter al or Figur
eral Figuraativ
tivee
Imagery includes language that appeals to all of the human Imagery is neither a type of figurative language nor does it solely
senses, including sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. involve the use of figurative language to create descriptions for one
• While imagery can and often does benefit from the use of simple reason: imagery can be totally literal. Take the lines from
figurative language such as metaphors and similes, imagery can Robert Frost's "After-Apple Picking:"
also be written without using any figurative language at all.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
Imag
Imager
eryy Pr
Pronuncia
onunciation
tion The rumbling sound
Here's how to pronounce imagery: im
im-ij-ree Of load on load of apples coming in.

These lines contain powerful imagery: you can feel the swaying
Types of Imag
Imager
eryy
ladder, see the bending boughs, and hear the rumbling of the apples
There are five main types of imagery, each related to one of the going into the cellar bin. But it is also completely literal: every word
human senses: means exactly what it typically means. So this imagery involves no
• Visual imagery (sight) figurative language at all.

• Auditory imagery (hearing) Now, that doesn't mean imagery can't use figurative language. It can!
You could write, for instance, "The apples rumbled into the cellar bin
• Olfactory imagery (smell) like a stampede of buffalo," using a simile to create a non-literal
• Gustatory imagery (taste) comparison that emphasizes just how loudly those apples were
• Tactile imagery (touch) rumbling. To sum up, then: imagery can involve the use of figurative
language, but it doesn't have to.
Some people may also argue that imagery can be kinesthetic (related
to movement) or organic (related to sensations within the body).
Writers may focus descriptions in a particular passage on primarily EX
EXAMPLES
AMPLES
one type of imagery, or multiple types of imagery.
Imagery is found in all sorts of writing, from fiction to non-fiction to
poetry to drama to essays.
Imag
Imager
eryy and Figur
Figuraativ
tivee Languag
Languagee
Many people (and websites) confuse the relationship between Example of Imag eryy in Romeo and Julie
Imager Juliett
imagery and figurative language. Usually this confusion involves one
In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo describes his first sight of
of two things:
Juliet with rich visual imagery:
• Describing imagery as a type of figurative language.

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O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! keeper...") to describe the way that Ruth in the passage looks at the
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, water stain on the table. The figurative language doesn't just describe
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear the color or sound or smell of the scene, it captures the obsessive way
that Ruth glances at the water stain, and the way that seeing it gives
This imagery does involve the use of figurative language, as Romeo her a sense of ease. Here the figurative language deepens the imagery
describes Juliet's beauty in the nighttime by using a simile that of the scene.
compares her to a jewel shining against dark skin.
As she unfolded the white linen and let it billow over the fine
Example of Imag
Imager
eryy in "Bir
"Birches"
ches" mahogany table, she would look once more at the large
water mark. She never set the table or passed through the
In the early lines of his poem "Birches," Robert Frost describes the dining room without looking at it. Like a lighthouse keeper
birches that give his poem it's title. The language he uses in the drawn to his window to gaze once again at the sea, or a
description involves imagery of sight, movement, and sound. prisoner automatically searching out the sun as he steps into
the yard for his hour of exercise, Ruth looked for the water
When I see birches bend to left and right
mark several times during the day.
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay Example of Imag eryy in Perfume: The S
Imager Sttor
oryy of a Mur
Murder
derer
er
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them The main character of Patrick Suskind's novel Perfume: The Story of a
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning Murderer has a supernaturally powerful sense of smell. In this
After a rain. They click upon themselves passage, which describes the smells of an 18th century city, the
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored narrator captures the nature of 18th century cities—their grittiness
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. and griminess—through the smell of their refuse, and how in such a
world perfume might be not just a luxury but a necessity. Further, he
Example of Imag eryy in The R
Imager Rooad makes readers aware of a world of smell of which they normally are
only slightly aware, and how a super-sensitive sense of smell could
The novelist Cormac McCarthy is known, among other things, for his
both be powerful but also be overwhelmingly unpleasant. And finally,
powerful imagery. In this passage from his novel The Road, note how
through smell the narrator is able to describe just how gross humans
he uses imagery to describe the fire on the distant ridge, the feel of
can be, how they are in some ways just another kind of animal, and
the air, and even the feeling inside that the man experiences.
how their bodies are always failing or dying. Through descriptions of
smell, in other words, the novel also describes an overlooked aspect
A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox ridges
of the human condition.
above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast
like the northern lights. Cold as it was he stood there a long
In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a
time. The color of it moved something in him long forgotten.
stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women.
The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the
Example of Imag eryy in Mob
Imager Moby-Dick
y-Dick stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the
The passage ago appears at the very end of Herman Melville's Moby- kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired
Dick and describes the ocean in the moments after a destroyed ship parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets,
has sunk into it. Notice how Melville combines visual, auditory, and damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of
kinesthetic imagery ("small fowls flew"; "white surf beat"), and how chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys,
the imagery allows you to almost feel the vortex created by the the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the
sinking ship and then the silence left behind when it closes. slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood.
People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies
sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer
collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk
rolled five thousand years ago. and tumorous disease.

Example of Imag eryy in Song of Solomon

Imager
WHY WRITER
WRITERSSU
USE
SE IT
In this passage from Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison uses visual
imagery to capture the color and motion of the table cloth as it settles Imagery is essential to nearly every form of writing, and writers use
over the table. She also uses figurative language ("like a lighthouse imagery for a wide variety of reasons:

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• It eng
engag
ages
es rreeader s: Imagery allows readers to see and feel what's
aders:
going on in a story. It fully engages the reader's imagination, and OTHER RESOURCES
brings them into the story.
• Wikipedia entr
entryy on imag
imager
eryy: A concise, no nonsense entry on
• It'
It'ss int
inter
eres
esting:
ting: Writing without imagery would be dry and dull, imagery.
while writing with imagery can be vibrant and gripping. Imagery
makes the • Imag
Imager
eryy in R
Robert
obert FFrros
ost'
t'ss poe
poetr
tryy: A page that picks out different
kinds of imagery in poems by Robert Frost.
• It ccan
an se
sett the sc
scene
ene and ccommunic
ommunicaate char
charac
actter
er:: The
description of how a person or place looks, moves, sounds, • Imag
Imager
eryy in John K
Keeats'
s'ss poe
poetr
tryy: A page that identifies imagery in
smells, does as much to tell you about that person or place as any poems by John Keats.
explanation can. Imagery is not just "window dressing," it is the
necessary sensory detail that allows a reader to understand the
world and people being described, from their fundamental traits HO
HOWWT
TO
O CITE
to their mood.
• It ccan
an be symbolic: Imagery can both describe the world and ML
MLAA
establish symbolic meanings that deepen the impact of the text. Florman, Ben. "Imagery." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 5 May 2017. Web. 31
Such symbolism can range from the weather (rain occurring in Aug 2017.
moments of sadness) to symbolism that is even deeper or more
complex, such as the way that Moby-Dick layers multiple Chic
Chicag
ago
o Manual
meanings through his descriptions of the whiteness of the whale.
Florman, Ben. "Imagery." LitCharts LLC, May 5, 2017. Retrieved August
31, 2017. http://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/
imagery.

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