OzymandiasPercy Bysshe Shelley
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Imagery of fragmentation and erosion does the work of the argument: power is already broken in the first image.
← The devices guide
Imagery
Language that appeals to the senses, arranged so that a pattern emerges. One vivid image is description; a recurring pattern of images is an argument.
How to spot it
Underline every reference to light, weight, heat or illness in a single chapter. The pattern will usually tell you what the book thinks.
Why writers use it
Because the body believes images faster than it believes statements.
In the texts
Dulce et Decorum EstWilfred Owen
Guttering, choking, drowning
The verbs are bodily and involuntary. Owen makes the reader's throat react before the Latin quotation is even reached.
Tess of the d'UrbervillesThomas Hardy
The landscape is described with the same care as the heroine.
Hardy's fields are indifferent witnesses. Nature's beauty never intervenes, which is exactly the point.
Common misread
Do not list images as decoration. The question is always what the pattern does over the whole work.