A Short Guide to Imagery, Symbolism,
and Figurative Language
by Andrea Clark
Imagery can be defined as a writer or
speaker’s use of words or figures of speech to create a vivid mental picture or
physical sensation. Many good examples
of imagery and figurative language can be found in “Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God,” a sermon delivered by the Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards. For example, Edwards creates a powerful image
figurative language when he says:
‘We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see
crawling on the earth; so it is easy for God, when he pleases, to cast his
enemies down to hell.”
The image Edwards creates here is the vivid mental picture
of someone crushing a worm. Edwards is
also using figurative language because he compares the ease with which God can
“cast his enemies down to hell” with the ease of our crushing a worm beneath
our feet. The point he is making is that
human beings are as small and powerless in the eyes of God as worms are to us;
just as a worm is at our mercies for its existence, so we are at God’s for our
existence. The most important reason
to analyze a writer’s usage of imagery and figurative is to recognize how it
contributes to the point he is trying to make or the effect he is attempting to
create. This is true whether the
writer is Jonathan Edwards attempting to inspire terror in the hearts of his
congregation or a sports writer for a newspaper trying to help his readers
experience the excitement of a football game they were not able to see. If writers just throw a surplus of images and
figures of speech into their writing, it seems artificial and amateurish, and
it can be annoying.
Types of Imagery
Although the word “imagery” most often brings to mind mental
images, imagery is not always visual; it can appeal to any of the five senses.
Here is a list of some types of imagery that appeal to different senses:
·
Gustatory imagery appeals to the sense of taste.
·
Kinetic imagery conveys a sense of motion.
·
Olfactory imagery appeals to the sense of smell.
·
Tactile imagery appeals to the sense of touch.
·
Visual imagery is created with pictures (many visual images are pictures
of things representing well-known sayings or phrases).
Symbolism
Writers often create images through the use of symbolism.
Carl Jung defined a symbol
as “a term, a name, or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet
that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional an obvious
meaning.” Symbols can be based on
culture, such as a country’s flag (stars and stripes=
Types of Figurative Language
When a writer compares something to something else it is not
really like literally, he is using a metaphor. Human beings are not literally worms, but
Edwards uses them to make his point.
When an author makes a comparison using the word “like” or “as,” he is
using a type of figurative language called a simile. A simile is exactly the same as a metaphor except that it has to have the
words “like” or “as.” For instance, if
Edwards had said, “We are like worms to God” or “God can crush us as
easily as a worm,” he would have been creating a simile.
Another common type of figure of speech is hyperbole, an obvious
exaggeration. For instance, during the
first week of class I was monopolizing the faculty Xerox machine at CYP for
long periods of time, much to the chagrin of other instructors who also needed
to make copies. The reason I had to make
so many copies is that the ACC bookstore did not order enough copies of the
textbooks for most of my classes. As I
was attempting to make copies of about 40 pages from the textbook for my World
Literature I class, I apologetically explained to one of my colleagues that the
bookstore had not ordered nearly enough copies of your text. “So you’re making
copies of the whole book?” she asked in exasperation. “No,” I replied in response to her hyperbole, “this is only The Epic of Gilgamesh.”
When I was a teenager attending the First Missionary Baptist
Church of Buna, I was forced to endure the sermons of Brother Drew Sheffield, a
pastor who fancied himself
Another common type of figure of speech is personification. A writer uses personification when he gives human
qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics to nonhuman entities. The nonhuman entities can be animals or
inanimate (non-living) things. Here are
some examples of the use of personification
in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. In
poem # 712, “I Could Not Stop for Death,” Emily presents Death as the driver of
a carriage. In poem #986, “A Narrow
Fellow in the Grass,”
Please check out this link if you would like a little more
informative about imagery and figurative language:
http://www.pfmb.unimb.si/eng/dept/eng/text/figlang.htm.
.