imagery essay about life

Definition of Imagery

Imagery is a literary device that refers to the use of figurative language to evoke a sensory experience or create a picture with words for a reader. By utilizing effective descriptive language and figures of speech , writers appeal to a reader’s senses of sight, taste, smell, touch, and sound, as well as internal emotion and feelings. Therefore, imagery is not limited to visual representations or mental images, but also includes physical sensations and internal emotions.

For example, in his novel   The Scarlet Letter , Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes imagery as a literary device to create a sensation for the reader as a means of understanding the love felt by the protagonist , Hester Prynne.

Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.

By using descriptive language in an effective and unique way, Hawthorne evokes feelings and allows the reader an internal emotional response in reaction to his description of love. This image is especially poignant and effective for readers of this novel since Hester’s love, in the story , results in darkness , shame, and isolation–the opposite of sunshine and radiance. However, Hawthorne’s imagery appeals to the reader’s understanding of love and subsequent empathy for Hester’s emotions and actions, despite her transgression of societal norms, morals , and laws.

Common Examples of Imagery in Everyday Speech

People frequently use imagery as a means of communicating feelings, thoughts, and ideas through descriptive language. Here are some common examples of imagery in everyday speech:

• The autumn leaves are a blanket on the ground.
• Her lips tasted as sweet as sugar.
• His words felt like a dagger in my heart.
• My head is pounding like a drum.
• The kitten’s fur is milky.
• The siren turned into a whisper as it ended.
• His coat felt like a velvet curtain.
• The houses look like frosted cakes in winter .
• The light under the door looked buttery.
• I came inside because the house smells like a chocolate brownie.

Types of Poetic Imagery

For poetic imagery, there are seven primary types. These types of imagery often feature figures of speech such as similes and metaphors to make comparisons . Overall, poetic imagery provides sensory details to create clear and vibrant descriptions. This appeals to a reader’s imagination and emotions as well as their senses.

Here are the main types of poetic imagery:

• Visual : appeals to the sense of sight through the description of color, light, size, pattern, etc.
• Auditory : appeals to the sense of hearing or sound by including melodic sounds, silence , harsh noises, and even onomatopoeia .
• Gustatory : appeals to the sense of taste by describing whether something is sweet, salty, savory, spicy, or sour.
• Tactile : appeals to the sense of touch by describing how something physically feels, such as its temperature, texture, or other sensation.
• Olfactory : appeals to the sense of smell by describing something’s fragrance or odor.
• Kinesthetic : appeals to a reader’s sense of motion or movement through describing the sensations of moving or the movements of an object .
• Organic : appeals to and communicates internal sensations, feelings, and emotions, such as fatigue, thirst, fear, love, loneliness, despair, etc.

Famous Examples of Imagery in Shakespearean Works

Writers use imagery to create pictures in the minds of readers, often with words and phrases that are uniquely descriptive and emotionally charged to emphasize an idea. William Shakespeare ’s works feature imagery as a literary device for readers and audiences as a means to enhance their experience of his plays. Shakespeare’s artistic use of language and imagery is considered to be some of the greatest in literature.

Here are some famous examples of imagery in Shakespearean works:

• “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep.”  Romeo and Juliet
• “There’s daggers in men’s smiles.”  Macbeth
• “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever,- One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never.”  Much Ado About Nothing
• “If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”  The Taming of the Shrew
• “Good- night , sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”  Hamlet
• “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies , that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends.”  A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”  The Tempest
• “And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”  Richard III
• “By heaven, me thinks it were an easy leap, To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon”  Henry IV
• “If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.”  Twelfth Night

Writing Imagery

Writers use imagery to evoke emotion in readers. In this way, the reader’s understanding of the poetic subject , setting , plot , characters , etc., is deepened and they have a sense of how to feel about it. Ideally, as a literary device, imagery should enhance a literary work. Unfortunately, some writers try to use this literary device too often, which can lessen the impact of the description and figurative language.

For imagery to be effective and significant, whether, in poetry or a story, it should add depth and meaning to the literary work. Overuse of imagery can feel tedious for readers and limit their access to and understanding of the writer’s purpose. Therefore, it’s essential for writers to balance presenting information in a straightforward manner and using imagery as a literary device.

Difference between Literal Imagery and Figurative Imagery

There is a slight difference in literal and figurative imagery. Literal imagery, as the name applies, is near in meanings and almost the same thing or exactly what the description says. For example, color like the red rose implies the same thing. However, in figurative imagery, a thing is often not what it implies. There is often the use of hyperbole , simile , or metaphors that construct an image that could be different from the actual thing or person. For example, his cries moved the sky is not an example of literal imagery but of figurative imagery as the skies do not move with cries.

Tips to Analyze Imagery

Analysis of imagery is often done in poetry and short stories. However, imagery is present in every literary work where description becomes of some significance. Whenever there is a description in a literary work, a reader first analyses different figures of speech such as metaphors, similes, personifications , images, and hyperbole, etc. There are four major steps in analyzing imagery in a specific description.

• Identify the type of figures of speech, types of images, and their roles in the description.
• Compare and contrast the types of images and their accuracy in the description.
• Compare and contrast the role of the specific figures of speech, their meanings, their roles, and their end product.
• Critique the description and see how it demonstrates its actual meanings in the context and setting.

Use of Imagery in Sentences

• Iwan’s sweaty gym clothes left a stale odor in the locker room; so they had to keep the windows open.
• The tasty, salty broth soothed her sore throat as Simran ate the warm soup.
• Glittering white, the blanket of snow -covered everything in sight and also blocked the street.
• The tree bark was rough against the deer’s skin but it did satisfy its itch.
• Kids could hear the popping and crackling as their mom dropped the bacon into the frying pan, and soon the salty, greasy smell wafted toward me.

Examples of Imagery in Literature

Though imagery is often associated with poetry, it is an effective literary device in all forms of writing. Writers utilize imagery as a means of communicating their thoughts and perceptions on a deeper and more memorable level with readers. Imagery helps a reader formulate a visual picture and sensory impression of what the writer is describing as well as the emotions attached to the description. In addition, imagery is a means of showcasing a writer’s mastery of artistic and figurative language, which also enhances the meaning and enjoyment of a literary work for a reader.

Here are some examples of imagery in literature:

Example 1:  Goblin Market (Christina Rossetti)

Early in the morning When the first cock crow’d his warning, Neat like bees, as sweet and busy, Laura rose with Lizzie: Fetch’d in honey, milk’d the cows, Air’d and set to rights the house, Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat, Cakes for dainty mouths to eat, Next churn’d butter, whipp’d up cream, Fed their poultry, sat and sew’d; Talk’d as modest maidens should: Lizzie with an open heart, Laura in an absent dream, One content, one sick in part; One warbling for the mere bright day’s delight, One longing for the night.

In this passage of her poem , Rossetti uses all forms of poetic imagery to appeal to the reader’s physical senses as well as their experience of motion and internal emotions. The reader can visualize the actions taking place in the poem along with a sense of orderly movement paired with disordered emotion. As the sisters Lizzie and Laura go about their maidenly and pastoral tasks, the poet’s description of their divergent mindsets and feelings creates an imagery of the tension between darkness and light, innocence and temptation. These contrasting images evoke unsettled and contradictory feelings for the reader, undermining the appearance of the sisters’ idyllic lives with a sense of foreboding.

Example 2:  The Yellow Wallpaper  (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.

In this passage of Gilman’s short story , the narrator uses poetic imagery to describe the yellow wallpaper which eventually ensnares her mind and body. The narrator’s imagery effectively appeals to the reader’s sense of sight, smell, and touch so that the reader is as repulsed by the wallpaper as the story’s protagonist. By utilizing imagery as a literary device, Gilman is able to evoke the same feelings of sickness, despair, fear, claustrophobia, etc., for the reader as she does for the narrator. In addition to this emotional effect, the artistic language used to describe the yellow wallpaper also enhances its symbolic presence in the story.

Example 3:  The Red Wheelbarrow  (William Carlos Williams)

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

This poem by William Carlos Williams features imagery and, in fact, is an example of Imagist poetry. Imagism was a poetic movement of the early twentieth century that veered away from the heavy description that was characteristic of Romantic and Victorian poems. Instead, the purpose of Imagism was to create an accurate image or presentation of a subject that would be visually concrete for the reader. Imagist poets achieved this through succinct, direct, and specific language, favoring precise phrasing over set poetic meter .

In Williams’s poem, the poet uses simple language and clear expression to create imagery for the reader of a red wheelbarrow, lending beauty , and symbolism to an ordinary object. By describing the wheelbarrow with sparse but precise language, the reader can picture an exact visual image of what the poet is trying to convey which, in turn, evokes an emotional response to the image. This imagery enhances the meaning of the poem’s phrasing such that each word becomes essential, and the poem and its imagery are nearly indistinguishable.

Synonyms of Imagery

Imagery has several synonyms with slightly different meanings. They are imagination, picturing, mental imagery, vision, imaging, and dreaming are almost near in meanings but evocation, chimera, pretense, and mind’s eyes.

Related posts:

• Auditory Imagery
• Visual Imagery
• Gustatory Imagery
• Tactile Imagery
• Olfactory Imagery
• Kinesthetic Imagery
• Examples of Imagery in Poetry

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, using imagery in college essays: tips and importance.

As I start drafting my essays for college applications, how crucial is it to include imagery, and does anyone have strategies for incorporating it effectively without overdoing it?

Imagery can be a powerful tool in your essays, creating an immersive experience for the reader and showcasing your writing abilities. It's important to use it to bring your story to life, painting a vivid picture of experiences, settings, emotions, or actions. However, the key is balance. You want to enhance your narrative without detracting from your message or making the prose feel forced.

One strategy is to choose moments where detailed descriptions will add value, perhaps when setting the scene or emphasizing a pivotal moment in your story. It's often more impactful to illustrate one memorable instance in detail than to use flowery language throughout.

For example, instead of describing a general passion for nature, you could describe the intricate patterns of frost on leaves during an early morning hike. This paints a picture while telling something meaningful about your appreciation for detail and beauty. Keep it natural, and let your own voice shine through. Best of luck with your applications!

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CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

• Literary Terms
• Definition & Examples
• When & How to use Imagery

I. What is Imagery?

Imagery is language used by poets, novelists and other writers to create images in the mind of the reader. Imagery includes figurative and metaphorical language to improve the reader’s experience through their senses.

II. Examples of Imagery

Imagery using  visuals:

The night was black as ever, but bright stars lit up the sky in beautiful and varied constellations which were sprinkled across the astronomical landscape.

In this example, the experience of the night sky is described in depth with color (black as ever, bright), shape (varied constellations), and pattern (sprinkled).

Imagery using sounds:

Silence was broken by the peal of piano keys as Shannon began practicing her concerto .

Here, auditory imagery breaks silence with the beautiful sound of piano keys.

Imagery using scent:

She smelled the scent of sweet hibiscus wafting through the air, its tropical smell a reminder that she was on vacation in a beautiful place.

The scent of hibiscus helps describe a scene which is relaxing, warm, and welcoming.

Imagery using taste:

The candy melted in her mouth and swirls of bittersweet chocolate and slightly sweet but salty caramel blended together on her tongue.

Thanks to an in-depth description of the candy’s various flavors, the reader can almost experience the deliciousness directly.

Imagery using touch:

After the long run, he collapsed in the grass with tired and burning muscles. The grass tickled his skin and sweat cooled on his brow.

In this example, imagery is used to describe the feeling of strained muscles, grass’s tickle, and sweat cooling on skin.

III. Types of Imagery

Here are the five most common types of imagery used in creative writing:

a. Visual Imagery

Visual imagery describes what we see: comic book images, paintings, or images directly experienced through the narrator’s eyes. Visual imagery may include:

• Color, such as: burnt red, bright orange, dull yellow, verdant green, and Robin’s egg blue.
• Shapes, such as: square, circular, tubular, rectangular, and conical.
• Size, such as: miniscule, tiny, small, medium-sized, large, and gigantic.
• Pattern, such as: polka-dotted, striped, zig-zagged, jagged, and straight.

b. Auditory Imagery

Auditory imagery describes what we hear, from music to noise to pure silence. Auditory imagery may include:

• Enjoyable sounds, such as: beautiful music, birdsong, and the voices of a chorus.
• Noises, such as: the bang of a gun, the sound of a broom moving across the floor, and the sound of broken glass shattering on the hard floor.
• The lack of noise, describing a peaceful calm or eerie silence.

c. Olfactory Imagery

Olfactory imagery describes what we smell. Olfactory imagery may include:

• Fragrances, such as perfumes, enticing food and drink, and blooming flowers.
• Odors, such as rotting trash, body odors, or a stinky wet dog.

d. Gustatory Imagery

Gustatory imagery describes what we taste. Gustatory imagery can include:

• Sweetness, such as candies, cookies, and desserts.
• Sourness, bitterness, and tartness, such as lemons and limes.
• Saltiness, such as pretzels, French fries, and pepperonis.
• Spiciness, such as salsas and curries.
• Savoriness, such as a steak dinner or thick soup.

e. Tactile Imagery

Lastly, tactile imagery describes what we feel or touch. Tactile imagery includes:

• Temperature, such as bitter cold, humidity, mildness, and stifling heat.
• Texture, such as rough, ragged, seamless, and smooth.
• Touch, such as hand-holding, one’s in the grass, or the feeling of starched fabric on one’s skin.
• Movement, such as burning muscles from exertion, swimming in cold water, or kicking a soccer ball.

IV. The Importance of Using Imagery

Because we experience life through our senses, a strong composition should appeal to them through the use of imagery. Descriptive imagery launches the reader into the experience of a warm spring day, scorching hot summer, crisp fall, or harsh winter. It allows readers to directly sympathize with characters and narrators as they imagine having the same sense experiences. Imagery commonly helps build compelling poetry, convincing narratives , vivid plays, well-designed film sets, and descriptive songs.

V. Imagery in Literature

Imagery is found throughout literature in poems, plays, stories, novels, and other creative compositions. Here are a few examples of imagery in literature:

Excerpt describing a fish :

his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age .

This excerpt from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish” is brimming with visual imagery. It beautifies and complicates the image of a fish that has just been caught. You can imagine the fish with tattered, dark brown skin “like ancient wallpaper” covered in barnacles, lime deposits, and sea lice. In just a few lines, Bishop mentions many colors including brown, rose, white, and green.

Another example :

A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. Another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint , and here she kept a diary locked by a clasp , and a notebook written in a code of her own invention. … An old tin petty cash box was hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed.

In this excerpt from Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement , we can almost feel the cabinet and its varnished texture or the joint that is specifically in a dovetail shape. We can also imagine the clasp detailing on the diary and the tin cash box that’s hidden under a floorboard. Various items are described in-depth, so much so that the reader can easily visualize them.

VI. Imagery in Pop Culture

Imagery can be found throughout pop culture in descriptive songs, colorful plays, and in exciting movie and television scenes.

Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox:

Wes Anderson is known for his colorful, imaginative, and vivid movie making. The imagery in this film is filled with detail, action, and excitement.

Louis Armstrong’s “ What a Wonderful World. ”

Armstrong’s classic song is an example of simple yet beautiful imagery in song. For instance, the colors are emphasized in the green trees, red blooming roses, blue skies, and white clouds from the bright day to the dark night.

VII. Related Terms

(Terms: metaphor,  onomatopoeia and personification)

Metaphor is often used as a type of imagery. Specifically, metaphor is the direct comparison of two distinct things. Here are a few examples of metaphor as imagery:

• Her smiling face is the sun .
• His temper was a hurricane whipping through the school, scaring and amazing his classmates .
• We were penguins standing in our black and white coats in the bitter cold .
• Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is also a common tool used for imagery. Onomatopoeia is a form of auditory imagery in which the word used sounds like the thing it describes. Here are a few examples of onomatopoeia as imagery:

• The fire crackled and popped .
• She rudely slurped and gulped down her soup .
• The pigs happily oinked when the farmer gave them their slop to eat .
• Personification

Personification is another tool used for imagery. Personification provides animals and objects with human-like characteristics. Here are a few examples of personification as imagery:

• The wind whistled and hissed through the stormy night .
• The tired tree’s branches moaned in the gusts of wind.
• The ocean waves slapped the shore and whispered in a fizz as they withdrew again.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

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General Education

A literary device is a technique a writer uses to convey ideas and messages to their readers. That means that as readers, we need to understand and use literary devices to fully understand a work’s major themes!

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at how to use imagery to analyze a text. We’ll start by giving you the imagery definition before talking about why it’s an important tool for analyzing a text. Then we’ll walk you through some imagery examples in poetry and fiction and show you exactly how to analyze the imagery in each.

By the end of this article, you’ll be able to talk about imagery in literature like a pro, so let’s get started.

What Is Imagery? Definition and Explanation

Have you ever read a book that makes you feel like you’re seeing, feeling, smelling, or tasting the same thing as the character you’re reading about? (We had that experience the first time Harry Potter tries butterbeer in Hogsmeade .) If you have, you can thank imagery for that experience!

Imagery is the act of using language to create images in the reader’s mind . Writers use descriptive words and phrases to help the reader feel like they’re...well, wherever the writer wants them to be! Basically, the writer is trying to create a “mental image” for the reader through the words they choose. Here’s how one of the greatest horror writers of all time, Stephen King , describes imagery :

Imagery does not occur on the writer’s page; it occurs in the reader’s mind. To describe everything is to supply a photograph in words; to indicate the points which seem the most vivid and important to you, the writer, is to allow the reader to flesh out your sketch into a portrait.

In other words: you can think of imagery as painting with words in order to fuel the reader’s imagination!

An easy way to spot imagery in a text is to pay attention to words, phrases, and sentences that connect with your five senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound). That’s because writers know that in order to capture a reader’s attention, they need to engage with them mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Since imagery is designed to connect a reader to a text, it’s one of the most powerful tools a writer has to communicate their themes and messages.

The 2 Types of Imagery

Any time a writer engages a reader’s senses, they’re using imagery...which means imagery is a really broad literary device. In general, however , imagery fits into two big categories: literal and figurative.

Literal Imagery: Examples and Explanation

With literal imagery, a writer is literally describing things to the reader. (Pretty straightforward, huh?)

Writers often use literal imagery to describe the setting, characters, and situation for a reader. Literal imagery helps the reader picture where characters are, understand what characters are doing, and even foreshadow what might happen next. (For example, if the character is in a dark, dirty alley, they’re probably in a more dangerous situation than if the character is skipping through a field of daisies.)

Let’s take a look at an example of literal imagery from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park so you can see what we mean. In this scene, Dr. Alan Grant, Lex Murphy, and Tim Murphy are trying to hide from a tyrannosaurus rex:

The tyrannosaur was still looking downstream, its back turned to them. They hurried along the path to the waterfall, and had almost moved behind the sheet of falling water when Grant saw the tyrannosaur turn. Then they were completely behind the waterfall, and Grant was unable to see out through the silver sheet.

Now that you’ve read this passage, close your eyes and picture the scene. You’re probably picturing a giant waterfall, a hungry tyrannosaurus rex, and a lot of danger, right? That’s because the literal imagery in this passage paints a very specific, literal picture that helps you imagine what’s happening in this moment!

Magic, right? Not quite. Imagery works because the writer uses descriptive words and phrases to help paint a picture. Let’s take a look at the first few lines again and pick out some of the descriptive language that helps shape the scene:  

They were closer to the waterfall now, the roar much louder. The rocks became slippery, the path muddy. There was a constant hanging mist. It was like moving through a cloud.

These lines are almost exclusively description, and Crichton uses phrases like “rocks became slippery” and “constant hanging mist” to help you imagine exactly what’s happening. A good way to pick out literal imagery is to look for nouns, then see how they’re described. For example, the noun “waterfall” is described as having a “roar” that gets “louder” the closer the characters get!

From an analysis perspective, these literal images all work together to help build the mood , or tone , of the scene. In this case, the imagery of the scene contributes to its tense and suspenseful tone. The environment is treacherous--not only are the rocks slick, but the characters have trouble seeing through the mist and water. One false move, and they’ll be a tasty snack for a hungry dinosaur!

  Use this picture as inspiration for finding connotation! (This will all make sense in a second.)

Figurative Imagery: Examples and Explanation  

Unlike literal imagery, figurative imagery uses on the non-literal--or metaphorical--meaning of words to paint a picture for the reader. Almost all words have two meanings: their denotation and connotation. The denotation of a word is its literal, dictionary definition. Figurative imagery, on the other hand, relies on the connotation —or implied meaning—of words and phrases to help shape a text’s themes and ideas.

To see how figurative imagery works, let’s look at the first line of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130,” where the speaker is describing his lady love:  

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Okay. Let’s zero in on the word “sun” here. According to Merriam-Webster, the literal definition of the word “sun” is “the luminous celestial body around which the earth and other planets revolve, from which they receive heat and light, which is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium.” But the speaker doesn’t literally mean that his mistress’ eyes aren’t like a ball of gas!

So what does he mean? To figure this out, let’s look at the figurative imagery here. Take a minute and think of some of the implied or metaphorical meanings of the word “sun.” The word might make you think of warmth and happiness. It also might make you think of other images like burning, blazing, or fiery brightness.

With this figurative imagery in mind, this line is better read as “my mistress’s eyes aren’t bright, warm, or happy.” Not only does figurative imagery help this line make more sense, it also clues readers into the message of the poem: that you can recognize someone’s faults and still love them and find them beautiful.

One more quick note: because you’re a savvy reader , you’ve probably realized that this line from Shakespeare is also a metaphor , which is a comparison between two seemingly unrelated objects (in this case, “eyes” and “sun”). Writers often use other literary devices like metaphor, simile, and personification to help create vivid imagery for the reader. So don’t be surprised if you see imagery overlapping with other literary techniques!

Can an Example of Imagery be Both Literal and Figurative at the Same Time?

Absolutely! In fact, it’s quite common to see writers use literal and figurative imagery simultaneously. Take the first stanza of William Wordsworth’s poem, “Daffodils” :

That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

This stanza combines literal and figurative imagery. Literally, the images in this stanza help us see the speaker wandering around alone until he stumbles upon a patch of daffodils that are growing by a lake. This imagery is important to understanding Wordsworth’s poetry, which often explores the relationship between nature and man.  

The figurative imagery helps us learn a little more about the speaker, who’s an outsider. We can infer this because of the imagery he gives us; he imagines himself as a cloud floating over everything, able to see what’s going on but unable to participate. The daffodils, on the other hand, represent society. The imagery here is happy (the daffodils are “golden” and “dancing”), which is how the speaker views society as someone on the outside looking in.

 Imagery in Poetry: “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson

Now that you know more about imagery, let’s look at a poem that uses imagery to portray its major themes:

That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me.

Imagery can make something abstract, like an emotion or theory, seem more concrete and tangible to the reader. By using imagery, writers can evoke the feeling they want to talk about in their readers...and by making their readers feel, writers can also help readers connect to the messages in their work.

In this example, Emily Dickinson takes the abstract idea of “hope” and compares it to a bird. Dickinson paints images of hope doing all the same things a bird does: it “perches,” “sings,” and keeps “so many warm” with its feathers. And despite all these gifts, hope never “asked a crumb” of anything in return. By using imagery to take an abstract idea (hope) and make it concrete (a bird), Dickinson helps readers understand the nature of hope. For Dickinson, hope is something that costs little to have and yet offers us comfort in all of life’s toughest situations.

Imagery in Fiction: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Imagery can be an equally powerful tool for fiction writers, too. In Dracula, Bram Stoker uses imagery to drive home the horror of the novel. Let’s take a look at one particularly stand-out scene, where Arthur Holmwood has to kill his former fiancee, Lucy Westenra, who has been turned into a vampire:

Remember how we talked about how imagery can set a tone or mood? That’s certainly the case here. Lucy is visually described not as a woman but as a “thing,” and the “blood-curdling screech” she lets out is a great example of how auditory imagery--or the sound of a scene--can contribute to its overall effect. (In this case, it amps up the horror of a once-delicate Englishwoman being transformed into a bloodthirsty beast.) It's the imagery associated with Lucy that shows readers how vicious and animalistic she’s become, which is no surprise: she’s joined Dracula’s army of the undead.

Now, take a look at the imagery surrounding Arthur, Lucy’s former fiancee, and see how it compares to Lucy’s description. Even as he’s killing Lucy, Arthur is described as “a figure of Thor”--meaning he’s strong, heroic, and good with a hammer. Stoker specifically says Arthur is “untrembling” in his task; despite its grisly nature, his steadiness showcases his commitment to protecting his country from the vampire threat...even when it means driving a stake in his lover’s heart. Additionally, his face has the “shine” of duty, which is a nod to the glowing, angelic halos of angels. Arthur’s bravery and light stands in contrast to Lucy’s dark, demonic nature, and Stoker specifically uses imagery to show readers how good can triumph over evil.

3 Questions to Ask When Analyzing Imagery

These examples have shown you how to find and analyze imagery, but you’ll have to do this all by yourself when you take the AP Literature exam. But don’t worry--now that you’re an expert, finding and analyzing imagery will be a breeze! But just in case you get stuck, here are three questions you can ask yourself to help you better analyze imagery in literature and poetry.

Question 1: What Did I Imagine While I Was Reading?  

The hardest part about analyzing imagery is finding it in the first place. Like we mentioned earlier, a good way to do this is to look for nouns and search for words that describe them. Then you can start asking yourself if those descriptions are figurative imagery (i.e., do those words have any implied or metaphorical meaning).

But when you’re crunched for time, you can go back to the tried-and-true method of using your imagination. Which parts of the text made you picture something in your mind? Since imagery is designed to spark your imagination, there’s a great chance that section contains some sort of imagery!

Question 2: What Does the Imagery Reveal About the Situation?

This question helps you get to the meat-and-potatoes of your analysis really quickly. Once you find a piece of imagery, ask yourself what it’s showing you . It could be describing an important setting, plot point, or character. Make sure you’re asking yourself if there’s figurative imagery at work, too.

If you’re struggling here, you can always go back to the “mental picture” we talked about with the first question. What do you see in that image? There’s a good chance that whatever you’re imagining matters in some way. Once you have that image in your mind, you can start to ask yourself why that particular image is important.

Here’s what we mean: think about the Jurassic Park example we talked about earlier. The imagery there tells us some literal things about what’s happening in the scene, but it also adds to the danger and suspense of the main characters’ predicament. The same can be said for the excerpt from “Daffodils,” only instead of revealing a plot point, the imagery gives readers important insight into the narrator of the poem.

Question 3: How Does the Imagery Affect the Mood of the Text?

Once you find a good piece of imagery, ask yourself how it makes you feel. Is it hopeful? Scary? Depressed? Angry? The feelings associated with the imagery in a work can often reveal the theme of a text.

Take Emily Dickinson’s poem. What feelings are associated with the imagery surrounding “hope”? Well, birds are tame and delicate, and the bird Dickinson describes sings sweetly through life’s fierce storms. Hope is clearly a reassuring, gentle, uplifting thing. By asking yourself why Dickinson thinks hope is good, you can start to figure out some of the messages of the poem!

What's Next?

Test out your new-found imagery chops by analyzing a poem on your own! We think that Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” is a great place to start. Y ou can find the full text of the poem, as well as additional analysis, here .

There’s more to literary analysis than just knowing your way around imagery! Make sure you’re familiar with the most important literary devices, like personification, before you head into your AP test.

There are two parts to the AP Literature test: the multiple choice section and the essay section. Some students worry about the written portion of the test so much that they forget to study for the multiple choice questions! Don’t let this be your situation. Make sure you’re preparing for the whole test by reading through this guide to mastering the AP Literature exam’s multiple choice portion, too .

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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What is Imagery ?

Imagery is language that stimulates a reader’s senses, i.e., touch, taste, feel, sound, and sight.

How to pronounce Imagery ?

When do writers use imagery .

Writer’s use imagery when they want the reader to focus on the concrete or physical. By using vivid descriptions to create images, the writer appeals to the reader’s senses, creating a strong, often emotional, connection between the reader and the text.

How to use Imagery

•  Appeal to the senses.
• Be very specific in your descriptions.
• Be weird if you need to. Things are not as simple to describe as they once were. Don’t be afraid to use the weird to create the best sensory description.

The 7 Types of Imagery

• Visual – Appeals to sense of sight
• Auditory – Appeals reader’s sense of sound
• Tactile – Allows the reader to imagine how the object being described feels, i.e. texture, temperature, density, etc.
• Gustatory – The reader imagines s/he/they can actually taste what is being described
• Olfactory – Appeals to the reader’s sense of smell, i.e., sweet, sour, rotten, etc.
• Kinesthetic – More abstract than the 5 traditional senses, this type of imagery describes motion and allows the reader to visualize how something moves. I.e., sways, rocks, runs, strolls, briskly or slowly, etc.

Example:  A Tale of Two Cities , Charles Dickens “At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt , and there was a loud city from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged. ”

• Organic – Even more abstract than kinesthetic imagery, organic imagery occurs when a writer uses concrete language to refer to a person’s internal feelings, i.e., emotions: jealousy, rage, sadness, etc. However, it may also be physical, such as feelings of pain, hunger, thirst, fatigue, sickness, etc.

Example: “Birches,” Robert Frost “So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It’s when I’m weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood. ”

Imagery in Literature 📚

• In The Death Path , Stephen M. Irwin makes heavy-handed use of olfactory imagery to thoroughly describe the odor.

“But a smell shivered him awake. It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of sex. It was the muscular rot of mushrooms. It was the spice of oak. Meaty and redolent of soil and bark and herb. It was bats and husks and burrows and moss. It was solid and alive – so alive! And it was close.”

•  In the following example from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird , the author uses both visual and tactile imagery.

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’ clock naps, and by nightfall were like stiff teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

• In the below passage from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 , Bradbury relies heavily on tactile imagery to bring the passage to life for the reader .

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed . With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatter and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.

Imagery in Children Books 🧸

• In C.S. Lewis’, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe , the author makes ample use of gustatory imagery to project the sweetness of the Turkish Delight onto the reader .

“The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle onto the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious. He was quite warm now, and very comfortable.”

• In E.B. White’s, Charlotte’s Web , the author uses visual imagery to describe how small and tiny they spiders were as they hatched:

A tiny spider crawled from the sac. It was no bigger than a grain of sand, no bigger than the head of a pin. Its body was grey with a black stripe underneath. Its legs were grey and tan.”

• In Holes , Louis Sachar uses a combination of tactile and organic imagery to describe how uncomfortable Stanley Yelnats is on the bus:

“He was on a long bus ride to nowhere. The bus wasn’t air-conditioned, and the hot, heavy air was almost as stifling as the handcuffs.”

Imagery in Songs 🎧

• “River,” Eminem and Ed Sheeran –

“Always the bridesmaid, never ‘The bride, hey!’

What can I say? If life was a highway

And deceit was an enclave, I’d be swerving in five lanes

Speeds at a high rate, like I’m slidin’ on ice, maybe

That’s why I may have came at you sideways”

• “Cardigan,” Taylor Swift – 

Vintage tee, brand new phone

High heels on cobblestones

When you are young, they assume you know nothing

• “Come Together,” The Beatles – 

Here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly

He got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy roller

He got hair down to his knee

Got to be a joker he just do what he please

Imagery in Poetry ✍🏽

• “October,” Louise Glück –

“Daybreak. The low hills shine

ochre and fire, even the fields shine.

I know what I see; sun that could be

the August sun, returning

everything that was taken away —”

• “Daddy,” Sylvis Plath –

“Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.”

• “Rain on a Grave,” Thomas Hardy – 

“Soon will be growing

Green blades from her mound,

And daisies be showing

Like stars on the ground,

Till she form part of them –

Ay – the sweet heart of them,

Loved beyond measure

With a child’s pleasure

All her life’s round.”

Imagery in Movies and Other Visual Media 🎥

When applying imagery to film, movies, and TV, there is some conflict surrounding what this means. One could argue that imagery depicted through this medium is the responsibility of the writer. To that effect, that is the stance taken in the following explanation of imagery in the media. By their very nature, movies, film, and TV are visual and auditory sense experiences. To create these experiences, it is the responsibility of the writer to effectively describe how to create the desired visual and auditory experience to the actor or actress through the script. The best example of what this means applies to fight scenes. In the script, the writer must appeal to the actor or actress’ kinesthetic and auditory senses. By writing words such as, “pow,” “slap,” “thud,” “slam,” or “slap,” s/he/they know what types of movement or action are needed to visually and auditorily create the scene. For more information, please refer to this explanatory video from The Writer’s Desk:

Related to Imagery 👥

Personification – The attribution of human or human-like characteristics to a non-human thing such as an animal or object. Personification is often used in descriptive text to create a more vivid image in the reader’s mind. Simile – The comparison of two unrelated things using the words “like” or “as.” Writers often use similes to help them create a more vivid image in the mind of the reader .

What is imagery in literature?

Imagery is a literary device that uses descriptive language to appeal to the reader’s senses, helping to create vivid pictures in the mind. It can involve any of the five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell) and is used to enhance the emotional, physical, or thematic impact of a narrative or poem.

How does imagery enhance a text?

Imagery enhances a text by making descriptions more vivid and engaging, allowing readers to fully immerse themselves in the world of the narrative or poem. It evokes emotional responses and can convey complex ideas, themes, or emotions through sensory details, making the reading experience more dynamic and memorable.

Can imagery be found in both poetry and prose?

Yes, imagery can be found in both poetry and prose . In poetry, it is often used to convey emotions and create a particular mood or atmosphere . In prose , imagery can bring settings, characters, and actions to life, helping readers to visualize the scenes described and connect more deeply with the story.

Why do writers use imagery?

Writers use imagery to paint vivid pictures in the minds of their readers, to evoke sensory experiences, and to emotionally engage them. It is a powerful tool for creating atmosphere , highlighting themes, and expressing the unspoken nuances of the characters’ experiences, thoughts, and emotions.

How can I identify imagery in a text?

To identify imagery in a text, look for detailed descriptions that appeal to one or more of the five senses. These descriptions will often use figurative language , such as similes and metaphors, to compare and evoke vivid pictures or sensations related to the subjects being described.

Life as We Knew It Imagery

By susan beth pfeffer.

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by Timothy Sexton

Survival Guilt

As opposed to survivor guilt, survival guilt is a term applicable to the emotional turmoil that is often portrayed in end of the world scenarios. Survival under such circumstances inevitably requires decision-making that prompts a self-evaluation of the very basis of one’s humanity. This moment arrives for the Miranda in the wake of Mrs. Nesbitt’s death:

“What I really wanted to do was go through her kitchen cabinets and see what food she had left, but the very thought of it made me excited and that didn't seem like the proper way to feel. It made me feel like a cannibal.”

Understated Foreshadowing

Imagery is subtly used to convey that the perspective of the narration is that of a typical teenager. At the same time, the imagery is also ironically underplayed foreshadowing of things to come:

“This moon thing is supposed to happen around 9:30 Wednesday night…They said asteroids hit the moon pretty often, which is how the moon gets its craters, but this one is going to be the biggest asteroid ever to hit it and on a clear night you should be able to see the impact when it happens, maybe even with the naked eye but certainly with binoculars. They made it sound pretty dramatic, but I still don't think it's worth three homework assignments.”

Serious Foreshadowing

The foreshadowing gets more serious afterwards. In the wake of asteroid collision with the moon, things are changing in a way that becomes noticeable even to self-involved teenage girls with more important things on their minds than astronomical Armageddon:

“I woke up this morning and immediately sensed that things were different. It's hard to explain. It was cooler than it has been (which is good), but the sky was this weird gray color, not exactly like it was cloudy or even foggy. More like someone had pulled a translucent gray shade over the blue sky.”

The Damage Done

Imagery is finally used to powerful effect to reveal the full extent to which earlier foreshadowing underplayed expectations. In fact, things turn out far worse than anyone imagined. The full effects of the devastation caused by "the moon thing" won’t truly be known for longer still, but the first incoming reports are devastating enough:

"Staten Island and the eastern section of Long Island are completely submerged. Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard are no longer visible. Providence, Rhode Island—in fact, most of Rhode Island—can no longer be seen. The islands off the coast of the Carolinas are gone. Miami and Fort Lauderdale are being battered.”

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Life as We Knew It Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Life as We Knew It is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What literary elements does the author use?

Check out Literary elements below:

https://www.gradesaver.com/life-as-we-knew-it/study-guide/literary-elements

examples of allusions

Scientific and astrological allusions such as gravity, the moon, and asteroids.

Allusions to history through the mention of “Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra.”

What are 3 scientific quotes or excerpts

I'm not sure what you mean by scientific quotes. There are parts that are related to surviving after the destruction attributed to the asteroid and the influenza outbreak. You can find them throughout the text.

Study Guide for Life as We Knew It

Life as We Knew It study guide contains a biography of Susan Beth Pfeffer, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Life as We Knew It
• Life as We Knew It Summary
• Character List

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• Writing Tips

Figurative Language – Definition and Examples

3-minute read

• 13th April 2023

In this article, you’ll learn about figurative language: what it is, how to use it, and lots of examples to inspire your everyday speech and descriptive writing .

What is Figurative Language?

Figurative language is language that uses words or expressions with a meaning that is different from the literal interpretation. It is often used to create imagery, evoke emotion, or emphasize a point in a way that literal language cannot. Think of it as painting a picture with words in the minds of your audience – for example, “She was as light as a feather while dancing.”

5 Types of Figurative Language

Below, we’ll look at five types of figurative language – metaphor, idiom, simile, hyperbole, and personification – that you can use in an essay, poem , speech, or conversation.

A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two things by stating that one thing is another, without using “like” or “as.” Metaphors are used to create imagery, evoke emotions, and help readers or listeners to understand an idea or concept in a new and interesting way.

Here are some examples of metaphors:

An idiom is a phrase or expression that has a figurative meaning that is different from the literal meaning of the words. Idioms are often used in informal or conversational language to add color or humor.

Here are some examples of idioms:

If you want to include idioms in your everyday speech or writing, make sure you fully understand the figurative meaning before using them. If used incorrectly, they can cause confusion for your audience.

A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things using “like” or “as.” They are a great writing technique to create vivid imagery and a memorable comparison.

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Here are some examples of similes:

Hyperbole is a figure of speech that involves exaggeration for emphasis or effect. It is mostly used to emphasize a point in a funny or memorable way. Hyperbole is great to use in everyday language or writing, but it’s important to use it in moderation – otherwise, it can come across as insincere or unbelievable.

Here are some examples of hyperbole:

Personification

Personification is a figure of speech in which an inanimate object or animal is given human-like qualities or characteristics. This technique is mostly used in poetry or descriptive writing to create vivid imagery.

Here are some examples of personification:

Figurative language is a great addition to your everyday speech and is frequently used in literature and poetry. It can add depth and richness to language, making it more interesting and expressive. However, it can also be confusing if the reader or listener does not understand the intended meaning of the figurative language. Therefore, it is important to have a basic understanding of figurative language in order to fully appreciate and understand written and spoken communication.

Interested in learning more about how use descriptive language and vivid imagery? Check out our Writing Tips blog to learn more.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Great Gatsby — Imagery and Similes in Emerson’s “Commodity”

Imagery and Similes in Emerson’s "Commodity"

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Figurative Language

Figurative Language Definition

What is figurative language? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Figurative language is language that contains or uses figures of speech . When people use the term "figurative language," however, they often do so in a slightly narrower way. In this narrower definition, figurative language refers to language that uses words in ways that deviate from their literal interpretation to achieve a more complex or powerful effect. This view of figurative language focuses on the use of figures of speech that play with the meaning of words, such as metaphor , simile , personification , and hyperbole .

Some additional key details about figurative language:

• Figurative language is common in all sorts of writing, as well as in spoken language.
• Figurative language refers to language that contains figures of speech, while figures of speech are the particular techniques. If figurative speech is like a dance routine, figures of speech are like the various moves that make up the routine.
• It's a common misconception that imagery, or vivid descriptive language, is a kind of figurative language. In fact, writers can use figurative language as one tool to help create imagery, but imagery does not have to use figurative language.

Figurative Language Pronunciation

Here's how to pronounce figurative language: fig -yer-uh-tiv lang -gwij

Figures of Speech and Figurative Language

To fully understand figurative language, it's helpful to have a basic understanding of figures of speech. More specifically, it's helpful to understand the two main types of figures of speech: tropes and schemes .

• Tropes are figures of speech that play with and shift the expected and literal meaning of words.
• Schemes are figures of speech that involve a change from the typical mechanics of a sentence, such as the order, pattern, or arrangement of words.

Put even more simply: tropes play with the meaning of words, while schemes play with the structure of words, phrases, and sentences.

The Different Things People Mean When They Say Figurative Language

When people say figurative language, they don't always mean the precise same thing. Here are the three different ways people usually talk about figurative language:

• Dictionary definition of figurative language: According to the dictionary, figurative language is simply any language that contains or uses figures of speech. This definition would mean that figurative language includes the use of both tropes and schemes.
• Much more common real world use of figurative language: However, when people (including teachers) refer to figurative language, they usually mean language that plays with the literal meaning of words. This definition sees figurative language as language that primarily involves the use of tropes.
• Another common real world use of figurative language: Some people define figurative language as including figures of speech that play with meaning as well as a few other common schemes that affect the rhythm and sound of text, such as alliteration and assonance .

What does all that boil down to for you? If you hear someone talking about figurative language, you can usually safely assume they are referring to language that uses figures of speech to play with the meaning of words and, perhaps, with the way that language sounds or feels.

Common Types of Figurative Language

There are many, many types of figures of speech that can be involved in figurative language. Some of the most common are:

• Metaphor : A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unrelated things by stating that one thing is another thing, even though this isn't literally true. For example, the phrase "her lips are a blooming rose" obviously doesn't literally mean what it says—it's a metaphor that makes a comparison between the red beauty and promise of a blooming rose with that of the lips of the woman being described.
• Simile : A simile, like a metaphor, makes a comparison between two unrelated things. However, instead of stating that one thing is another thing (as in metaphor), a simile states that one thing is like another thing. An example of a simile would be to say "they fought like cats and dogs."
• Oxymoron : An oxymoron pairs contradictory words in order to express new or complex meanings. In the phrase "parting is such sweet sorrow" from Romeo and Juliet , "sweet sorrow" is an oxymoron that captures the complex and simultaneous feelings of pain and pleasure associated with passionate love.
• Hyperbole : Hyperbole is an intentional exaggeration of the truth, used to emphasize the importance of something or to create a comic effect. An example of a hyperbole is to say that a backpack "weighs a ton." No backpack literally weighs a ton, but to say "my backpack weighs ten pounds" doesn't effectively communicate how burdensome a heavy backpack feels.
• Personification : In personification, non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent to their plans." Describing the rain as "indifferent" is an example of personification, because rain can't be "indifferent," nor can it feel any other human emotion.
• Idiom : An idiom is a phrase that, through general usage within a particular group or society, has gained a meaning that is different from the literal meaning of the words. The phrase "it's raining cats and dogs" is known to most Americans to mean that it's raining hard, but an English-speaking foreigner in the United States might find the phrase totally confusing.
• Onomatopoeia : Onomatopoeia is a figure of speech in which words evoke the actual sound of the thing they refer to or describe. The “boom” of a firework exploding, the “tick tock” of a clock, and the “ding dong” of a doorbell are all examples of onomatopoeia.
• Synecdoche : In synecdoche, a part of something is used to refer to its whole . For example, "The captain commands one hundred sails" is a synecdoche that uses "sails" to refer to ships—ships being the thing of which a sail is a part.
• Metonymy : Metonymy is a figure of speech in which an object or concept is referred to not by its own name, but instead by the name of something closely associated with it. For example, in "Wall Street prefers lower taxes," the New York City street that was the original home of the New York Stock Exchange stands in for (or is a "metonym" for) the entire American financial industry.
• Alliteration : In alliteration, the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the “ b ” sound in: “ B ob b rought the b ox of b ricks to the b asement.” Alliteration uses repetition to create a musical effect that helps phrases to stand out from the language around them.
• Assonance : The repetition of vowel sounds repeat in nearby words, such as the " ee " sound: "the squ ea ky wh ee l gets the gr ea se." Like alliteration, assonance uses repeated sounds to create a musical effect in which words echo one another.

Figurative Language vs. Imagery

Many people (and websites) argue that imagery is a type of figurative language. That is actually incorrect. Imagery refers to a writers use of vivid and descriptive language to appeal to the reader's senses and more deeply evoke places, things, emotions, and more. The following sentence uses imagery to give the reader a sense of how what is being described looks, feels, smells, and sounds:

The night was dark and humid, the scent of rotting vegetation hung in the air, and only the sound of mosquitoes broke the quiet of the swamp.

This sentence uses no figurative language. Every word means exactly what it says, and the sentence is still an example of the use of imagery. That said, imagery can use figurative language, often to powerful effect:

The night was dark and humid, heavy with a scent of rotting vegetation like a great-aunt's heavy and inescapable perfume, and only the whining buzz of mosquitoes broke the silence of the swamp.

In this sentence, the description has been made more powerful through the use of a simile ("like a great-aunt's..."), onomatopoeia ("whining buzz," which not only describes but actually sounds like the noise made by mosquitoes), and even a bit of alliteration in the " s ilence of the s wamp."

To sum up: imagery is not a form of figurative language. But a writer can enhance his or her effort to write imagery through the use of figurative language.

Figurative Language Examples

Figurative language is more interesting, lively, beautiful, and memorable than language that's purely literal. Figurative language is found in all sorts of writing, from poetry to prose to speeches to song lyrics, and is also a common part of spoken speech. The examples below show a variety of different types of figures of speech. You can see many more examples of each type at their own specific LitChart entries.

Figurative Language Example: Metaphor

Metaphor in shakespeare's romeo and juliet.

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , Romeo uses the following metaphor in Act 2 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet , after sneaking into Juliet's garden and catching a glimpse of her on her balcony:

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Romeo compares Juliet to the sun not only to describe how radiantly beautiful she is, but also to convey the full extent of her power over him. He's so taken with Juliet that her appearances and disappearances affect him like those of the sun. His life "revolves" around Juliet like the earth orbits the sun.

Figurative Language Example: Simile

In this example of a simile from Slaughterhouse-Five , Billy Pilgrim emerges from an underground slaughterhouse where he has been held prisoner by the Germans during the deadly World War II firebombing of Dresden:

It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now , nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.

Vonnegut uses simile to compare the bombed city of Dresden to the moon in order to capture the totality of the devastation—the city is so lifeless that it is like the barren moon.

Figurative Language Example: Oxymoron

These lines from Chapter 7 of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls describe an encounter between Robert Jordan, a young American soldier fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and his lover María.

She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and then found them and were against them and he felt her, fresh, new and smooth and young and lovely with the warm, scalding coolness and unbelievable to be there in the robe that was as familiar as his clothes, or his shoes, or his duty and then she said, frightenedly, “And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that the other is all gone.”

The couple's relationship becomes a bright spot for both of them in the midst of war, but ultimately also a source of pain and confusion for Jordan, as he struggles to balance his obligation to fight with his desire to live happily by Maria's side. The contradiction contained within the oxymoron "scalding coolness" emphasizes the couple's conflicting emotions and impossible situation.

Figurative Language Example: Hyperbole

Elizabeth Bennet, the most free-spirited character in Pride and Prejudice , refuses Mr. Darcy's first marriage proposal with a string of hyperbole :

From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

Elizabeth's closing statement, that Darcy is the "last man in the world" whom she would ever marry, is an obvious hyperbole. It's hard to believe that Elizabeth would rather marry, say, an axe murderer or a diseased pirate than Mr. Darcy. Even beyond the obvious exaggeration, Austen's use of hyperbole in this exchange hints at the fact that Elizabeth's feelings for Darcy are more complicated than she admits, even to herself. Austen drops various hints throughout the beginning of the novel that Elizabeth feels something beyond mere dislike for Darcy. Taken together with these hints, Elizabeth's hyperbolic statements seem designed to convince not only Darcy, but also herself, that their relationship has no future.

Figurative Language Example: Personification

In Chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter , Nathaniel Hawthorne describes a wild rose bush that grows in front of Salem's gloomy wooden jail:

But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

In the context of the novel's setting in 17th century Boston, this rose bush, which grows wild in front of an establishment dedicated to enforcing harsh puritan values, symbolizes those elements of human nature that cannot be repressed, no matter how strict a community's moral code may be: desire, fertility, and a love of beauty. By personifying the rosebush as "offering" its blossoms to reflect Nature's pity (Nature is also personified here as having a "heart"), Hawthorne turns the passive coincidence of the rosebush's location into an image of human nature actively resisting its constraints.

Figurative Language Example: Idiom

Figurative language example: onomatopoeia.

In Act 3, Scene 3 of Shakespeare's The Tempest , Caliban uses onomatopoeia to convey the noises of the island.

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices...

The use of onomatopoeia makes the audience feel the sounds on the island, rather than just have to take Caliban's word about there being noises.

Figurative Language Example: Synecdoche

In Act 4, Scene 3 of Shakespeare's Macbeth , an angry Macbeth kicks out a servant by saying:

Take thy face hence.

Here, "thy face" stands in for "you." Macbeth is simply telling the servant to leave, but his use of synecdoche makes the tone of his command more harsh and insulting because he uses synecdoche to treat the servant not as a person but as an object, a body part.

Figurative Language Example: Metonymy

In his song "Juicy," Notorious B.I.G. raps:

Now I'm in the limelight 'cause I rhyme tight

Here he's using "limelight" as a metonymy for fame (a "limelight" was a kind of spotlight used in old theaters, and so it came to be associated with the fame of being in the spotlight). Biggie's use of metonymy here also sets him up for a sweet rhyme.

Figurative Language Example: Alliteration

In his song "Rap God," Eminem shows his incredible lyrical dexterity by loading up the alliteration :

S o I wanna make sure, s omewhere in this chicken s cratch I S cribble and doodle enough rhymes T o maybe t ry t o help get s ome people through t ough t imes But I gotta k eep a few punchlines Just in c ase, ‘ c ause even you un s igned Rappers are hungry l ooking at me l ike it's l unchtime…

Why Do Writers Use Figurative Language?

The term figurative language refers to a whole host of different figures of speech, so it's difficult to provide a single definitive answer to why writers use figurative language. That said, writers use figurative language for a wide variety of reasons:

• Interest and beauty: Figurative language allows writes to express descriptions, ideas, and more in ways that are unique and beautiful.
• Complexity and power: Because figurative language can create meanings that go beyond the literal, it can capture complex ideas, feelings, descriptions, or truths that cause readers to see things in a new way, or more closely mirror the complex reality of the world.
• Visceral affect: Because figurative language can both impact the rhythm and sound of language, and also connect the abstract (say, love) with the concrete (say, a rose), it can help language make an almost physical impact on a reader.
• Humor: By allowing a writer to layer additional meanings over literal meanings, or even to imply intended meanings that are the opposite of the literal meaning, figurative language gives writers all sorts of options for creating humor in their writing.
• Realism: People speak and even think in terms of the sorts of comparisons that underlie so much figurative language. Rather than being flowery, figurative language allows writers to describe things in ways that match how people really think about them, and to create characters who themselves feel real.

In general, figurative language often makes writing feel at once more accessible and powerful, more colorful, surprising, and deep.

Other Helpful Figurative Language Resources

• The dictionary definition of figurative : Touches on figurative language, as well as some other meanings of the word.
• Figurative and Frost : Examples of figurative language in the context of the poetry of Robert Frost.
• Figurative YouTube : A video identifying various forms of figurative language from movies and television shows.
• Wikipedia on literal and figurative language : A bit technical, but with a good list of examples.

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Photo essay: a year in the life of step.

Anthony Yang, W’24, photographed the Successful Transition and Empowerment Program (STEP) from fall 2022 through summer 2023.

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Posted: May 8, 2024

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“I documented STEP because I wanted to capture moments that others can enjoy – more of giving back to a community that gave so much to me.” — Anthony Yang, W’24

Successful Transition and Empowerment Program (STEP ) is a four-year program that introduces undergraduate students to important Wharton and Penn resources, fosters connection and community development, and helps members build skills to effectively navigate college, both academically and socially. 

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My Mother Died By Suicide, But She Wasn't Selfish

Yes, my mom took her own life. no, she wasn’t being selfish.

"I never felt ashamed of the way my mom passed, but I knew there were so many assumptions and stigmas surrounding suicide."

"My biggest fear was that people would think my mom did not love me — that she was an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a bad parent. In reality, my mom was none of those things."

"Suicide is not a pathology of the individual mind. It’s an accumulative tragedy brought on by the lack of resources and the stress of acculturation into an oppressive system — in addition to the emotional pain our families carry from generations of trauma passed on by the harmful legacies of colonialism."

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Like Kacey Musgraves and Ariana Grande, My Saturn Return Changed Everything

I'm the poster child for a Saturn Return success story. I quit my corporate 9-5, got married, moved cities, bought a house, and started my own business — all during my Saturn Return.

Saturn Return has been in the collective consciousness lately for a variety of reasons. From viral social media stars to celebrities, everyone is talking about this cosmic coming of age. Ariana Grande, for example, has a track titled " Saturn Returns Interlude " on her latest album, and Kacey Musgraves sings about hers in " Deeper Well ," saying, "My Saturn has returned / when I turned 27 / everything started to change."

Put simply, your Saturn Return marks a time when you cross the threshold into adulthood. Saturn is the planet of structure , discipline, focus, hard work, and delayed gratification in astrology. Between the ages of 27 and 30, the planet Saturn "returns" to the same spot in the night sky as when you were born. During this extended period, usually lasting two to three years, the stars turn up the pressure in your life, forcing you to focus your efforts, energy, and attention on whatever theme Saturn has in store for you.

At first glance, it might look like that dreaded cosmic disciplinarian let me glide right through my 20s. Maybe it was the fortunate position of Jupiter in my birth chart offsetting all that lousy luck the lord of karma and time wanted to send my way. Maybe it was my cool, calm, easygoing attitude. (It was decidedly not: I'm a Cancer with a Gemini moon.)

The truth is my Saturn Return sucked. It created a lot of confusion about where I thought my life was going. It changed every foundational element of my life, from my career to my relationship. And it was a reminder that you can get everything you "want" and still not know what exactly you're getting yourself into.

Take it from a professional: Saturn is proof that an old dog can learn new ways to trick you.

I've always been ambitious, but a bit sloppy with details. (Blame it on my Leo stellium .) I talk before I think, creating the rules as I go. For years, my Saturn in Aquarius not only supported that but allowed me to aspire higher and higher than my dreams had ever taken me. Where was the limit? How far could I go? What was I running from? These were the questions I kept asking myself when I pulled tarot cards during my lunch break, wondering why I still felt so restless.

After all, I was doing what everyone said I never could. I'd somehow landed a lucrative writing job in tech despite having a "useless" humanities degree. I was the daughter of two public school educators, a state school graduate who went from late nights reading "Beowulf" in the library stacks to rubbing elbows with Ivy League start-up founders in the big city. Look at me now, mom! What was I trying to prove — and who was I trying to prove it to?

At the same time that I was signing onto a new job offer, I was settling into my new house in my hometown with my husband. We bought a place in the neighborhood where we had our first date years before, less than an hour from both our parents. I finally had my own space in our home to write, make art, create content, and blast my music a little too loud. This is adulthood, I remember thinking, maybe we'll throw dinner parties in the backyard. But I was still pulling tarot cards looking for a sign that I was on the right track. My Saturn Return had started back in March 2020 and I was a year into this fancy new life and still feeling like I was missing something.

Saturn always let me think I was two steps ahead of whatever emotional baggage was clearly weighing on my mind. So what if my Saturn was square with my Midheaven , an aspect that causes a crisis of identity? I was winning, I thought. And always in on the joke, Saturn let me dance right to the edge of the cliff and sign my dream job offer just two days before my exact Saturn Return sent me into a spiritual quarter-life crisis.

In February 2021, a month after starting my fancy new job, I pulled the tarot card that changed my life: the Eight of Pentacles . Apprenticeship and mastery? Conquering the impossible through hours of endless study? This was something I knew I could do. And what auspicious timing! I was just taking over a high-profile project from my new boss and was confident that with enough effort and research, I could make a lasting impression on the team and leadership. But it seemed that no matter how hard I worked to appeal to my boss, she wasn't moved.

Saturn's journey from one sign to the next is said to have an immediate effect as soon as it transitions. With Saturn retrograde in Aquarius, I was supposed to feel called to rebellion; instead, I was smoothing my edges so as not to snare my boss's fragile sensibilities.

Confused by my own lack of progress — despite the clear signs the stars were sending me — I dove deeper into my esoteric studies: horoscopes, tarot, numerology, whatever could give me the secret to winning over my boss. I stalked her Instagram to figure out her birthday (and therefore her zodiac sign). I ran our synastry to see if our mentor-mentee relationship was incompatible. It was. I ignored it.

There was a period during the summer when I thought things could be turned around. But you know what they say about Saturn forcing you to perform the same task over and over again until you master it. Some lessons are hard to learn. I tracked the stars looking for my way into their world, and the answer was always the same: You don't belong here. You've overstayed your welcome. You need a way out.

Saturn gave me a huge blessing in the form of a harsh reality check.

Saturn gave me a huge blessing in the form of a harsh reality check just a month shy of my one-year work anniversary. A seemingly routine Zoom call with my boss about a project devolved into accusations of complacency and a cross-examination of my commitment to the company. She told me I didn't want it bad enough. I told her I quit effective immediately. I spent the rest of the week punitively ruminating on all the things I'd done wrong in our talks.

Lost in the void that I'd created for myself, I turned to the stars to look for a sign of what I was missing. They gave me the same answer as always: write what you know. I quit my job on Tuesday, posted about my job search Friday of that same week, and by the end of the month, I was working as a freelance horoscope writer and astrologer after years of tinkering as a hobbyist. I relied on the skills I'd just spent the last year sharpening — and ignoring — to try and win my old boss over. Funny how that works.

In her book " Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil ," astrologer Liz Greene says there is no fast and easy method of making a friend of Saturn. But it's possible for Saturn to have a sense of humor if we ourselves can become subtle enough to understand his irony.

Saturn entered Pisces on March 7, 2023, leaving me older, wiser, and a touch more frazzled than before. But as a survivor of Saturn's reign through Aquarius, I now welcome the practicality of this cosmic taskmaster. Let's just hope I'm still fond of his jokes when my second Saturn Return hits in 2050.

Lauren Ash is a St. Louis-based astrologer, writer, and media professional who covers astrology, pop culture, and horoscopes for millennial and Gen Z audiences. Currently, she works as a senior editor at Parade, Astrology.com, and Horoscope.com, covering horoscopes and other cosmic happenings.

• Personal Essay

Joseph Epstein, conservative provocateur, tells his life story in full

In two new books, the longtime essayist and culture warrior shows off his wry observations about himself and the world

Humorous, common-sensical, temperamentally conservative, Joseph Epstein may be the best familiar — that is casual, personal — essayist of the last half-century. Not, as he might point out, that there’s a lot of competition. Though occasionally a scourge of modern society’s errancies, Epstein sees himself as essentially a serious reader and “a hedonist of the intellect.” His writing is playful and bookish, the reflections of a wry observer alternately amused and appalled by the world’s never-ending carnival.

Now 87, Epstein has just published his autobiography, “ Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life: Especially if You’ve Had a Lucky Life ,” in tandem with “ Familiarity Breeds Content: New and Selected Essays .” This pair of books brings the Epstein oeuvre up to around 30 volumes of sophisticated literary entertainment. While there are some short-story collections (“The Goldin Boys,” “Fabulous Small Jews”), all the other books focus on writers, observations on American life, and topics as various as ambition, envy, snobbery, friendship, charm and gossip. For the record, let me add that I own 14 volumes of Epstein’s views and reviews and would like to own them all.

Little wonder, then, that Epstein’s idea of a good time is an afternoon spent hunched over Herodotus’s “Histories,” Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian” or almost anything by Henry James, with an occasional break to enjoy the latest issue of one of the magazines he subscribes to. In his younger days, there were as many as 25, and most of them probably featured Epstein’s literary journalism at one time or another. In the case of Commentary, he has been contributing pieces for more than 60 years.

As Epstein tells it, no one would have predicted this sort of intellectual life for a kid from Chicago whose main interests while growing up were sports, hanging out, smoking Lucky Strikes and sex. A lackadaisical C student, Myron Joseph Epstein placed 169th in a high school graduating class of 213. Still, he did go on to college — the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — because that’s what was expected of a son from an upper-middle-class Jewish family. But Urbana-Champaign wasn’t a good fit for a jokester and slacker: As he points out, the president of his college fraternity “had all the playfulness of a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers.” No matter. Caught peddling stolen copies of an upcoming accounting exam for $5 a pop, Epstein was summarily expelled.

Fortunately, our lad had already applied for a transfer to the University of Chicago, to which he was admitted the next fall. Given his record, this shows a surprising laxity of standards by that distinguished institution, but for Epstein the move was life-changing. In short order, he underwent a spiritual conversion from good ol’ boy to European intellectual in the making. In the years to come, he would count the novelist Saul Bellow and the sociologist Edward Shils among his close friends, edit the American Scholar, and teach at Northwestern University. His students, he recalls, were “good at school, a skill without any necessary carry-over, like being good at pole-vaulting or playing the harmonica.”

Note the edge to that remark. While “Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life” is nostalgia-laden, there’s a hard nut at its center. Epstein feels utter contempt for our nation’s “radical change from a traditionally moral culture to a therapeutic one.” As he explains: “Our parents’ culture and that which came long before them was about the formation of character; the therapeutic culture was about achieving happiness. The former was about courage and honor, the latter about self-esteem and freedom from stress.” This view of America’s current ethos may come across as curmudgeonly and reductionist, but many readers — whatever their political and cultural leanings — would agree with it. Still, such comments have sometimes made their author the focus of nearly histrionic vilification.

Throughout his autobiography, this lifelong Chicagoan seems able to remember the full names of everyone he’s ever met, which suggests Epstein started keeping a journal at an early age. He forthrightly despises several older writers rather similar to himself, calling Clifton Fadiman, author of “The Lifetime Reading Plan,” pretentious, then quite cruelly comparing Mortimer J. Adler, general editor of the “Great Books of the Western World” series, with Sir William Haley, one of those deft, widely read English journalists who make all Americans feel provincial. To Epstein, “no two men were more unalike; Sir William, modest, suave, intellectually sophisticated; Mortimer vain, coarse, intellectually crude.” In effect, Fadiman and Adler are both presented as cultural snake-oil salesmen. Of course, both authors were popularizers and adept at marketing their work, but helping to enrich the intellectual lives of ordinary people doesn’t strike me as an ignoble purpose.

In his own work, Epstein regularly employs humor, bits of slang or wordplay, and brief anecdotes to keep his readers smiling. For instance, in a chapter about an editorial stint at the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Epstein relates this story about a colleague named Martin Self:

“During those days, when anti-Vietnam War protests were rife, a young woman in the office wearing a protester’s black armband, asked Martin if he were going to that afternoon’s protest march. ‘No, Naomi,’ he said, ‘afternoons such as this I generally spend at the graveside of George Santayana.’”

Learned wit, no doubt, but everything — syntax, diction, the choice of the philosopher Santayana for reverence — is just perfect.

But Epstein can be earthier, too. Another colleague “was a skirt-chaser extraordinaire," a man "you would not feel safe leaving alone with your great-grandmother.” And of himself, he declares: “I don’t for a moment wish to give the impression that I live unrelievedly on the highbrow level of culture. I live there with a great deal of relief.”

In his many essays, including the sampling in “Familiarity Breeds Content,” Epstein is also markedly “quotacious,” often citing passages from his wide reading to add authority to an argument or simply to share his pleasure in a well-turned observation. Oddly enough, such borrowed finery is largely absent from “Never Say You’ve Had a Happy Life.” One partial exception might be the unpronounceable adjective “immitigable,” which appears all too often. It means unable to be mitigated or softened, and Epstein almost certainly stole it from his friend Shils, who was fond of the word.

Despite his autobiography’s jaunty title, Epstein has seen his share of trouble. As a young man working for an anti-poverty program in Little Rock, he married a waitress after she became pregnant with his child. When they separated a decade later, he found himself with four sons to care for — two from her previous marriage, two from theirs. Burt, the youngest, lost an eye in an accident while a toddler, couldn’t keep a job, fathered a child out of wedlock and eventually died of an opioid overdose at 28. Initially hesitant, Epstein came to adore Burt’s daughter, Annabelle, as did his second wife, Barbara, whom he married when they were both just past 40.

Some pages of “Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life” will be familiar to inveterate readers of Epstein’s literary journalism, all of which carries a strong first-person vibe. Not surprisingly, however, the recycled anecdotage feels less sharp or witty the second time around. But overall, this look back over a long life is consistently entertaining, certainly more page-turner than page-stopper. To enjoy Epstein at his very best, though, you should seek out his earlier essay collections such as “The Middle of My Tether,” “Partial Payments” and “A Line Out for a Walk.” Whether he writes about napping or name-dropping or a neglected writer such as Somerset Maugham, his real subject is always, at heart, the wonder and strangeness of human nature.

Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life

Especially if You’ve Had a Lucky Life

By Joseph Epstein

Free Press. 304 pp. $29.99

Familiarity Breeds Content

New and Selected Essays

Simon & Schuster. 464 pp. $20.99

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Let This Breakfast Change Your Life

A simple miso-roasted salmon, part of a traditional Japanese spread, is both sustenance and self-care.

By Eric Kim

The chef Shota Nakajima goes to bed early and wakes up early. He walks his dog for an hour and a half every day. He doesn’t drink anymore, thriving on a diet of rice with grilled fish and pickles for most of his meals, especially breakfast. Getting to this place in life, a state of peace and equilibrium, was one of the hardest parts of transitioning from his 20s to his 30s, Nakajima says, but he is happier than he has ever been — as he describes it, “You know, just chilling, cranking.”

Talking to him felt like connecting with a happier, more complete version of myself in the not-too-distant future, a light at the end of what has felt, for me, like a long and tumultuous tunnel. Nakajima had figured it out, learned the lessons that come with time and experience. He had finished his Saturn return.

Recipe: Miso Roasted Salmon

An astrological concept, a Saturn return is considered a time of great upheaval — “growing older, burning out at work, increasingly higher bills, a couple of monumental life milestones,” as the astrologer Aliza Kelly has put it. According to NASA, it takes Saturn about 29.4 years to orbit the sun — or for it to return to the same spot in the sky as when you were born, signaling the end of a period of change (if you believe in astrology). As someone who is nearing the end of his return, I’ve never felt more upheaved by the colossal changes I’ve experienced from my late 20s to my early 30s, including but not limited to: new job, new apartment, new boyfriend. New life! One thing I’ve started to do that gets me a little closer to settling into this new beginning — my 30s — is eating Japanese breakfast.

The eclectic spread, called ichiju-sansai (“one soup, three dishes”), is beyond just a savory meal that soothes both soul and stomach lining first thing in the morning. These restorative breakfasts, centered on a single bowl of rice, are meant to be balanced, a careful mix of carb, protein and vegetable: say, with a perfectly steamed pot of medium-grain rice, a sliver of melting fish run through with miso, a fistful of blanched spinach draped in ground sesame seeds , a quivering onsen egg oozing yolk and, when I have the forethought, a teacup of homemade miso soup. An array of pickles pulled from the refrigerator — cucumbers, plums, radishes and whatever is in my house kimchi jar at the time — completes the meal.

Cooking an elaborate breakfast for the people you love most? It’s not just an act of service.

The first time I traveled to Seoul, my family and I landed late at night, jetlagged, and slept on the guest-room floor of my Aunt Young’s apartment complex near Olympic Park. When we awoke the next morning, we stumbled downstairs to a dining table brimming with the most elaborate banchan, stews, fishes and pickles. I remember my aunt’s bap (“rice” or “meal” in Korean) most vividly: It was shiny, fluffy and moist, a texture I try to recreate every time I make rice for myself today. She had also made us kalbi jjim, a long-braised party dish that’s so labor-intensive you eat it only once or twice a year. As a 5-year-old, when I asked Aunt Young if I could spoon some of the rich, coveted sauce onto my rice, she said: “Of course you can. I skimmed the fat off for you.”

What does it mean to cook such an elaborate breakfast for the people you love most? It’s not just an act of service. I’ve learned recently that cooking well for yourself, or for yourself and a partner, is also a means to true happiness, a way to honor your time together by making daily life count. So listen to this: Your Japanese breakfast spread should reflect not necessarily your aspirations but your quotidian preferences, your crisper drawer at the moment, your freezer meats, your kitchen practice. I don’t always roast a fillet or brew a soup; most mornings, I can barely pour myself a cup of coffee. But when I have fish and when I have soup for dinner the night before, you can bet those leftovers will go into my Japanese breakfast.

Growing up in Japan, the chef Yuji Haraguchi remembers finding the previous evening’s meal sprinkled throughout the next morning’s breakfast, a constellation of leftovers dotting an expanse of rice. (He would later dedicate his Brooklyn restaurant Okonomi to Japanese breakfasts.) For Haraguchi’s mother, a working parent, the priority was getting three kids out the door with bellies full and future bellies fuller. That’s why she would spend most of her energy every morning cooking lunch in the form of a bento box, which often included a tamagoyaki . She would make that large folded omelet, slice it up and nestle the tender pieces into her children’s lunchboxes. The ends, which were less uniform and more scrappy-looking, would go to Haraguchi and his two sisters’ breakfasts. As Haraguchi, 43, painted this portrait of his young mother to me, I imagined my own in her early 30s, rushing my brother and me out the door toward the school bus, plastic lunchboxes in hand and sensitive stomachs filled with seaweed and rice.

Japanese people don’t call it Japanese breakfast in the way that French people don’t call it French bread. It’s just breakfast. It’s also more of an attitude, an approach to mindful cooking, than it is a recipe to follow. But should you need a starting place, miso-roasted salmon is a solid anchor for the day. With this fish, less is more: The salty, umami balm of a miso marinade is lightened with lemon zest, which lends floral bittersweetness not unlike that from yuzu. The electric juice brings tang and tenderness. As always, serve it with white rice and miso soup , then finish with a cup of hojicha in your favorite coffee mug.

If the workload overwhelms you, remember that preparing Japanese breakfast is like cooking for future you, not present you. Plant a seed or two, water them if you like, but then live your life.

Eric Kim has been a food and cooking columnist for The Times since 2021. You can find his recipes on New York Times Cooking. More about Eric Kim

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A Judge Had a 13-Year-Old Girl Handcuffed for No Reason. A Year Later, He’s Faced Basically No Consequences.

Back in March 2023, I reported for Slate on a federal judge who handcuffed and berated an innocent 13-year-old girl who was in court to view her father’s sentencing. Over a year later, following a formal investigation , there have been only minimal consequences for that judge. This update shows how life-tenured federal judges, whose imperious self-regard can lead them to abuse spectators, can act with near impunity even when they are found culpable by their colleagues.

When Mario Puente showed up in San Diego U.S. District Court on Feb. 13, 2023, he had good reason to fear that he would be sent back to prison for violating his supervised release (the federal term for parole) on drug charges. He had no reason to worry, however, that his young daughter, who had just come along to show support for her dad, would end up in handcuffs. But that is what happened when Senior Judge Roger Benitez decided to teach an uncalled-for lesson to the 13-year-old girl, as recorded in the official transcript, who had done nothing more than sit quietly in the spectators’ section next to her aunt and a family friend.

In his last-ditch plea to stay out of prison, Puente made the fateful mistake of telling the court that he hoped to move away from his drug-infested neighborhood, where the bad company was already beginning to influence his daughter.

Benitez took that as a cue to turn to the girl, whose name has not been disclosed. “Com[e] up for just a second,” he instructed her, “and stand next to that lawyer over there.”

He then told a deputy U.S. marshal to “put the cuffs on her” and escort her to the jury box. The judge kept her cuffed for several minutes before he told the marshal to remove the restraints, and he hectored the sobbing girl about her perceived future:

If you’re not careful, young lady, you’ll wind up in cuffs, and you’ll find yourself right there where I put you a minute ago. I hope you remember this mean, old face. Look at it carefully. Remember that some day, those drugs may land you in a courtroom just like this.

After Benitez finally allowed the daughter to return to her seat, he proceeded to sentence her father to 10 months in prison. (Puente was soon released on time served when his case was transferred to another judge.)

To his credit, Chief District Judge Dana Sabraw quickly initiated  a formal   complaint against Benitez under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 . Although such complaints are ordinarily confidential at the initial stage, this one was publicly disclosed under a provision of the law to “maintain public confidence in the judiciary’s ability to redress misconduct or disability.” By then, however, Benitez’s misconduct had already been widely reported on legal blogs and in the California press.

A special investigating committee of five judges spent over a year reviewing the written record and interviewing numerous witnesses. Although Benitez declined to appear personally before the committee, he submitted two written responses to the complaint. The committee’s recommendation was then presented to the Judicial Council of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9 th Circuit, comprising nine federal trial and appellate court judges and chaired by Chief Judge Mary Murguia, which issued a final ruling earlier this month.

Remarkably, Benitez told the investigating committee that he would not straightforwardly apologize to the teenager he’d mistreated. Instead, he insisted that he’d simply taken an opportunity “to possibly alter the destructive trajectory of two lives,” meaning Puente and his daughter. He would therefore only apologize “if I could also briefly explain why I did what I did.”

He implausibly denied that he had done anything to “demean or shame” Puente’s daughter, as though standing in a crowded courtroom, weeping and handcuffed, while receiving a lecture on drug use, was something an innocent child could be expected to endure without humiliation.

Taking no responsibility for the harm he’d inflicted, Benitez blamed virtually everyone else in the courtroom for his behavior. The deputy marshals raised no objections to the handcuffing, he rationalized, and the defense lawyers, from the federal defenders’ office, had subjected Benitez to “emotional manipulation” by “telling [him] how much she loved her father.”

“Trying to help a 13-year-old girl,” Benitez maintained, “can’t be judicial misconduct.”

He was in deep and arrogant denial. The judicial council made short work of his defenses, unanimously concluding that Benitez had committed judicial misconduct by engaging in “abusive or harassing behavior [that] undermined the public’s trust and confidence in the judiciary.” Specifically, by “creating a spectacle out of a minor child in the courtroom [Benitez chilled] the desire of friends, family members, and members of the public to support loved ones at sentencing.”

While the condemnation of Benitez’s conduct was unequivocal, the consequence did not match the offense. Judicial councils have a limited range of available penalties, given that federal judges cannot be removed from office other than by impeachment. But even so, Benitez’s fellow judges let him off easier than they might have.

In a typical criminal case, for example, a defendant’s lack of remorse would call for a significant sentencing enhancement, and Benitez showed no contrition. As the judicial council found, “At no point during this investigative process has Judge Benitez accepted that his actions were ill-advised, improper, and damaging to the public’s trust in the judiciary.”

Nonetheless, the judicial council issued only a public reprimand and prohibited Benitez from presiding over new criminal cases for three years. The first penalty is less severe than censure, which is also available under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 , and the latter is meaningless, given that Benitez, as a senior judge, had recently exercised his option to refrain from new criminal cases. (Puente was before Benitez on a supervised release revocation, which counted as an old case; the judicial council also gave defendants the right to recuse Benitez from hearing supervised release violations in the future.)

A more fitting penalty also available under the law, although unmentioned in the judicial council decision, would have been to suspend Benitez from presiding over any cases at all “for a time certain.” A judge who will not accept responsibility for abusing a child in open court has no business sitting in judgment of anyone, even in civil cases.

Given his arrogant refusal to acknowledge his grave misconduct, it is hardly likely that the reprimand alone will teach Benitez the necessary lesson. Perhaps 10 months completely away from the bench—the same length of time to which he sentenced Mario Puente—might bring about some serious and much-needed reflection.