Close Reading Workshop Imagery Questions Revision Remember Imagery

Close Reading Workshop Imagery Questions: Revision

Remember! Imagery refers to: • Simile. • Metaphor. • Personification. You can usually write about imagery in “Language” questions, too.

Remember! These questions are usually Analysis questions. You will usually receive two marks for each example of imagery that you analyse and explain.

Remember! You must always use the “Just as…so to…” method that we have discussed in class.

The girl sailed through her Higher English exam.

Step 1 Quote the example of imagery and then state what technique has been used. (i. e. Metaphor? Simile? Personification? ) e. g. “The girl sailed” is a metaphor.

Step 2 State what is being described (x) and what it is being compared to (y). e. g. Her performance in the exam (x) is being compared to a boat sailing through water (y).

Step 3 Explain the relevant connotations of y (Just as. . . ) Then explain how the connotations of y are transferred on to x (So too. . . ) e. g. Just as a boat sailing through water would be smooth and fluid (y), so too did the girl pass her exam with ease and without any problems (x).

Example question Show the writer uses imagery to emphasise her criticism of consumerism (2) A Well, that’s just it. Turbo-consumerism—the age of instant gratification and voracious appetite for “stuff”—cannot make us happy and it never will. Every time we are seduced into buying one product, another appears that is “new”, “improved”, better than the one you have. Turboconsumerism is the heroin of human happiness, reliant on the fact that our needs are never satisfied. A consumer society can’t allow us to stop shopping and be content because then the whole system would die. Instead it has to sell us just enough to keep us going but never enough that our wants are satisfied. The brief high we feel is compensation for not having a richer, fuller life.

“Turbo consumerism is the heroin” is a metaphor. The author is comparing consumerism to heroin. Just as heroin is extremely addictive and potentially harmful, so too can people become very dependent on consumerism which can have a very detrimental effect on them.

Example question How effective do you find the writer’s use of imagery in lines 20 -24 in conveying the impact that flying has on the environment? 2 A/E But even in this self-interested arena a representative from the US Federal Aviation Administration caused some sharp intakes of breath from the audience by showing an extraordinary map of current flightpaths etched over one another on the world’s surface. The only places on Earth that are not scarred by routes are blocks of air space over the central Pacific, the southern Atlantic and Antarctica.

“scarred by routes” is a metaphor. The author is comparing the flightpaths of the planes to a scar on the earth’s atmosphere. Just as a scar is an ugly and life-long result of a wound, so too are the flightpaths disfiguring and permanent reminders of the damage caused by airtravel to our environment. This effectively conveys the negative impact of flight on the earth’s environment.

Example question By referring to one example, show the writer’s imagery conveys the importance of libraries. 2 A I have spent a substantial portion of my life since in libraries, and I still enter them with a mixture of excitement and awe. I am not alone in this. Veneration for libraries is as old as writing itself, for a library is more to our culture than a collection of books: it is a temple, a symbol of power, the hushed core of civilisation, the citadel of memory, with its own mystique, social and sensual as well as intellectual.

“temple” is a metaphor. The author is comparing the library to a temple. Just as a temple is a place of worship and reverence, so too are libraries places of enormous importance and deserving of huge respect and admiration.