Reading for Understanding Analysis and Evaluation Imagery Questions

Reading for Understanding, Analysis and Evaluation Imagery Questions We will revise simile, metaphor, personification and hyperbole, and consider how to answer this type of question in the exam.

Simile A comparison between two things using ‘like’ or ‘as’. The effect can be any number of things. However, it adds a visual emphasis or impact to a written description. He’s like a dog with a bone.

Metaphor A comparison between two things where one thing becomes or is the other. Similar effects as similes. You’re an angel.

Personification Another way of making a comparison. It is a special type of image: similes and metaphors can become personification. It involves giving human characteristics to an inanimate object. The wind howled down the corridor.

Hyperbole An exaggerated image to create a certain effect (often humorous) or to emphasise something. I got tonnes of birthday cards.

How to answer 1. Quote the image. 2. State what type of image it is. 3. Explain what links the two things being compared. • Just as … so too… 4. Explain the effect the image has on the reader. 5. Link to the question.

Example 1 Johann Hari reflects on a science-fiction novel he has been reading about an imagined world where books have been forgotten.

I have been thinking about this because I recently moved flat, which for me meant boxing and heaving several Everests of books, accumulated obsessively since I was a kid…. As I stacked my books high, and watched my friends get buried in landslides of novels, it struck me that this scene might be incomprehensible a generation from now. The book – the physical paper book – is being circled by a shoal of sharks, with sales down 9 percent this year alone. It’s being chewed by the e-book. It’s being gored by the death of the bookshop and library.

Example Answer 1(a) Show the writer’s use of imagery makes clear the number of books he possesses. (2)

Example Answer 1(a) Show the writer’s use of imagery makes clear the number of books he possesses. (2) • The writer uses a metaphor, ‘buried in landslides. ’ (1) • Just as people disappear in huge amounts of earth in landslides, so too did the writer’s friends vanish under the enormous number of his books they were carrying for him. (1) • The use of this image helps the reader to appreciate the sheer volume of books he has.

Example Answer 1(b) How does the writer use imagery to make clear the threat to the paper book? (2)

Example Answer 1(b) How does the writer use imagery to make clear the threat to the paper book? (2) • The writer uses a metaphor, ‘circled by a shoal of sharks. ’ (1) • Just as a shoal of sharks crowds around its intended victim prior to its slaughter, so too are physical books being increasingly threatened by the encroaching sale of ebooks. (1)