Rhetorical Strategies

Rhetorical Strategies Notes 2

Imagery • Imagery is a widely used term that has several distinctive meanings. • All, however, refer to the CONCRETE, rather than the ABSTRACT, aspects of a literary work.

Imagery • In a narrow sense, imagery means a visual description of an object or a scene—an image of picture of it, especially one that is particularly detailed and vivid.

Example • The opening stanza of Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “The Foresaken Garden”: In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead.

Imagery • The broad meaning of imagery includes all of the references to sensory perception that a work contains or evokes, not only in the form of the objects, actions, and scenes depicted in literal descriptions, but also in ALLUSIONS and in METAPHORS and SIMILES.

Imagery • The term is not limited to the appeals to sight in a literary work, but also includes descriptions and evocations of sound, touch, taste, smell, temperature, and movement as well.

Example • Li-Young Lee’s “Persimmons” This year, in the muddy lighting Of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking For something I lost. My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs, Black cane between his knees, Hand over hand, gripping the handle. He’s so happy that I’ve come home. I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question. All gone, he answers. Under some blankets, I find a box. Inside the box I find three scrolls. I sit beside him and untie Three paintings by my father: Hibiscus leaf and a white flower. Two cats preening. Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth. He raises both hands to touch the cloth, Asks, Which is this? This is persimmons, Father. Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk, The strength, the tense Precision in the wrist. I painted them hundreds of times Eyes closed. These I painted blind. Some things never leave a person: Scent of the hair of one you love, The texture of persimmons, In your palm, the ripe weight.

Imagery • The term “imagery” is sometimes used to refer to the FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE in a literary work. • Imagery can also help to establish the work’s ATMOSPHERE or to help readers understand a major THEME.

Romeo and Juliet • Romeo and Juliet contains several images of celestial sources of light. • When considered together, these may suggest both the beauty and peril of romantic love in the play.

R & J Images • “Star-crossed lovers” (doomed by astrological influences). • “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?/It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” • Romeo rejects the influence of the moon, the province of Diana, the goddess of chastity, and to praise his beloved’s eyes as comparable to “two of the fairest stars in all the heavens.” • The association between heavenly bodies and youthful beauty are clear.

Later on in R & J • After the lovers have rashly contracted a secret marriage, Juliet unwittingly gives the same images of sun and starts a more ominous turn. • Juliet wishes that the sun god Phoebus Apollo’s “fiery-footed steeds” could be whipped toward sunset by the nimble son Phaeton and so “immediately” bring on “love-performing night.”

At the End • After the two have committed suicide, the families stand helplessly at the side of their graves. • The Prince of Verona describes the mournful atmosphere: • A glooming peace this morning with it brings. • The sun for sorrow will not show his head.

Last words on imagery…I promise • The thematic imagery culminates in the PATHETIC FALLACY of the weather’s sympathy and the tragically truncated lives of the brilliant young couple and the PERSONIFICATION of the sun itself, once the image of Juliet’s shining beauty and of the headlong heat of their passion, beweeping their fate.

Symbolism • A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something, or creates a range of associations, beyond itself.

Common Symbols

Symbols • Writers may use symbols as they stand, as well as adapt other conventional concepts or events to give them a personal or exclusive meanings.

Symbol of Self-Discovery • The Odyssey • Adventure of Huckleberry Finn • Heart of Darkness

Another Symbol • Snake = entrancing but fatal temptation

Unique • In many literary works, a symbol is unique in that its meaning is particular to that poem, play, or story and must be inferred by the reader as the work develops.

Allegory Vs. Symbol • Allegory is predictable: • “Young Goodman Brown” • Young Puritan ignores the warning of his wife (named Faith) • Ventures into a dark forest • Meets a mysterious traveler who carries a staff “which bore the likeness of a great black snake” • He discovers a conclave engaged in satanic worship (ironically comprised of the “purest” people in town) • He feels a sudden sympathy for all that is wicked in his heart • He is overcome with the temptation to join the “loathsome brotherhood” • By the end of the story, he has entirely lost his “Faith”

Allegory • The meanings are clear: • The dark forest represents temptation • The traveler represents the devil • The wife the religious piety that the initially “Good Man” forsakes.

Back to Symbol • A symbol, in contrast, presents the image but leaves the subject that it represents open to a wide range of possible interpretations.

Example • “The Sick Rose” • A blighted flower might represent many forms of human suffering and corruption.

Signs of Symbol • Some signs of symbolic weight might be repeated appearances, especially at key points in the narrative, such as the climax of the conclusion; its close connection with the fate of the protagonist; and its detailed description.

Symbol in Othello • The Handkerchief • It is Othello’s first courtship gift to his bride, Desdemona. • It is introduced in the middle of the play, just after the villainous Iago has begun to convince Othello of the falsehood that Desdemona is having an affair with his junior officer, the handsome Cassio.

Othello • Desdemona loses the handkerchief in the process of trying to cure a headache that Othello has developed. • She offers to “bind his head hard,” a folk remedy for a migraine. • The ache comes from getting too little sleep, but it is symbolic of Othello’s supposed cuckoldry.

Othello • Popular legend in Shakespeare’s day held that a wife’s infidelity caused horns to grow on her betrayed husband’s head, a painful process. • Othello impatiently knocks the delicate cloth away with the words, “Your napkin is too little.” • This is the climactic moment of the play when Iago’s poisonous influence has become too strong to be counteracted with Desdemona’s love.

Othello • The neglected handkerchief is found by Iago’s wife Emilia, Desdemona’s lady in waiting, whom her husband has often urged to steal it. • She gives it to Iago in a vain attempt to please him, and he then plants it in Cassio’s bedchamber. • Cassio admires the rich embroidery work and asks his mistress to sew a copy of it before the unknown owner can demand its return.

Othello • Iago convinces the distraught husband that Cassio’s possession of the handkerchief is evidence that Desdemona has given it to this new lover: it is the “ocular proof” of her infidelity that Othello has demanded. • Only at the end of the play, after Othello has been driven to murder his beloved wife, does he discover the truth about the accessory that has so often changed hands, and meanings, in the course of the play.

Significance • The significance of the symbolic object shifts with each character who possesses it. • Desdemona: it is a precious token of her husband’s love. • When Othello is suffering it becomes merely a serviceable object that might bring him comfort. • Othello: it is first the link between his exotic past and his new happiness, and then the source of his bitter disillusionment and agonizing jealosy.

Significance • Cassio: it is merely a pretty accessory, and he is willing to exploit his mistress to replicate it. • Iago: It is a device to ensnare the soul of the commanding general he envies and loathes and to destroy Desdemona, the lovely young woman whom he lusts after but could never corrupt. • Emilia: it begins as the instrument for trying to win some affection from her cold husband and then becomes the means of being an unwitting accessory to Desdemona’s betrayal. Emilia’s revelation of the truth exposes Iago’s treachery, leading to both his downfall and Othello’s remorse.

Final Othello Thoughts • The properties that Othello attributes to the handkerchief ominously reflect Desdemona’s situation. • She has lost it, and he, her husband, now “loathe[s]” her, ironically, with no recognition that it was her utter devotion to his welfare that caused her to mislay it. • The “perdition” which he predicts will destroy not only her life and his, but also his soul.

Therefore… • A symbol in a particular work is often subtle and enigmatic, which makes for both its richness and the challenge of interpreting its possible meanings.

Atmosphere • Atmosphere, a term taken from meteorology, means the predominant mood or tone in all or part of a literary work. • Can be joyous, tranquil, melancholy, eerie, tense, or ominous. • The atmosphere can be suggested by factors such as the setting, dialogue, diction, and selection of details. • Atmosphere can foreshadow expectations about the outcome of the events in the story.

Example • Shakespeare’s Macbeth begins with the following stage direction: • Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches. • Immediately the atmosphere becomes ominous as the storm in the natural world is linked with supernatural forces.

Example • An example of eerie, ominous atmosphere from narrative fiction is “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. • Read passage.

Notes • Virtually every feature of the passage contributes to the atmosphere. • The setting is a “dull, dark” autumn day in a desolate place that contains only a dilapidated mansion beside a “black and lurid tarn.” • The gloomy adjectives and the old-fashioned term for “lake” suggest antiquity and isolation. • The long, complex sentences are full of concrete details, such as “white trunks of decayed trees” and “bleak walls.”

Notes • The figurative descriptions—the simile of the “vacant eye-like windows” and the metaphorical comparison of “utter depression” that the scene evokes to the “bitter lapse into everyday life” of the after-effects of an opium dream—reinforce the oppressive tone.

Notes • The first-person narrator does not allow such visual imagery to stand alone, however. • He states outright the effects of arriving at the scene on horseback: the “sense of insufferable gloom” and “sickening of the heart” that “so unnerved him in the contemplation of the House of Usher.”

Notes • His final attempt to overcome such feelings and literally gain a different perspective on the place, by looking at his reflection in the tarn, instead produces “a shudder even more thrilling than before.” • This last statement adds undertones of threat and revulsion to the atmosphere of gloom and desolation.

Another Example • Sometimes an author creates an ironic reversal of the expectations suggested by the atmosphere at a work’s outset, and so increases the shock of the outcome. • Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss” begins in a mood of high euphoria:

Explanation • The long, breathless sentences and third-person limited point of view reflect the utter “bliss” felt by the protagonist. • The childish expressions of joy to which she is tempted to give way—dancing “on and off the pavement,” “bowling a hoop,” and “laughing at nothing”—and the puns in her name—Bertha is as “young” and fresh as a newborn—add to the blithe atmosphere.

Explanation • The opening also contains hints, however, of the shift in tone that will occur at the end of the story. • Bertha’s fanciful simile of having “swallowed a bright piece of the afternoon sun” so that it “burns in her bosom” foreshadows the physical desire for her husband that she is feeling for the first time but is too naïve to recognize.

Explanation • Bertha rejects the second simile that she devises, comparing her “body” to “a rare, rare fiddle” that has been uselessly “shut up in a case.” • That is an apt analogy for the sexual frigidity that she has convinced herself that her husband understand and accepts. • At the end of the story she discovers the devastating truth: that he is having a passionate affair with a beautiful friend of hers. • The irony of the title, “Bliss,” is implied by the words that would be needed to complete the aphorism and to qualify the euphoric tone: “Ignorance is Bliss.”

Rhetorical Strategies