Don’t you love when you can see something, touch it, even smell or taste it, or to be able to hear it. Like imagine a beach… wait no, even better, imagine a highway. What do you see? A compiled amount of somewhat organized rows of shiny, silver, black, or blue cars, spotted along the road, all crammed together. With the occasional bright splash of a pink Punch-Buggy, or a hot red Mustang. Flickering lights of red and orange greet you from the rears of each vehicle and the bright white scopes on the front of each of the cars. The road, barely visible underneath the high amount of automobiles, deep black, with lines of yellow and dashes of white, all alight with the tall shiny poles flanking the roads. Over hanging their necks and heads of light over the chaos below. Now what do you smell, and hear, the thick smell of exhaust and tire burn as the cars skid and dodge each other. The sound of an occasional car horn and the obnoxious sound of the screeching of unattended breaks, or an unhinged muffler. Then, FWOZOOOOOMMMMMMZZZZZ the sound of an overconfident Harley rider as he dodges and weaves between cars, as the drivers honk and scream at him through their open windows.
Does that image in your head seem real, when books do this, mostly good books; we know what they are talking about. And that author seems more impressive and that story seems more realistic than ever. For me, imagery plays a big part in what I believe and think about while I read a novel. If I can image the place in the book it makes me become more intertwined with this story and understand this book more. Even imagine myself there, with the characters.
John Green is a good example of an author who does this, he does it a lot in his book, The Fault in Our Stars, and yet one part sticks out the most to me; when Hazel and Augustus go to this town in the Netherlands and it is explained beautifully-I feel like I am there with them. “It happened all at once: We exited the highway and there were the rows of houses of my imagination leaning precariously toward canals, ubiquitous bicycles, and coffee shops advertising LARGE SMOKING ROOM. We drove over a canal and from atop the bridge I could see dozens of houseboats moored along the water. It looked nothing like America. It looked like an old painting, but real- everything achingly idyllic in the morning light- and I thought about how wonderfully strange it would be to live in a place where almost everything had been built by the dead.” (Green, 157) This section of text puts this image in my head of this beautiful town, with history yet still elegant, not old. I feel like I am with them in this car, traveling along the canal, passing the shops and houses.
With me at least, imagery is important, so I can "see" and "feel" what the characters are seeing and feeling, because I am there with them. So it is less of reading and more of an experience.
