Task: For this essay you will examine a work for its use of imagery, specifically how that imagery creates a commentary on the work’s meaning and effectiveness.
Objective: In two-three pages explore a work’s sensory elements, its imagery, and what the use of that imagery does to the story’s overall effectiveness. You may choose a short story out of our book Perrine’s Literature or you may choose a film that contains artistic imagery.
Short Story: Choose a story in our book Perrine’s Literature and read it close, marking all the various ways the author introduces and maintains imagery in their language. Find passages that feel heavy with visual elements and explore in your writing how those instances of imagery affect the story? How does the imagery coincide with or contradict what the character is going through, what they are experiencing? How do those images help the story’s overall sound?
Film: Choose a film that is full of artful imagery (consider for example: Gravity, Pan’s Labyrinth, 1917, The Tree of Life…). As with the short story, examine the use of imagery closely, watching it over and over, marking the ways the filmmakers use imagery to coincide with or contradict what the characters are going through, what they are experiencing? How do those images help the story’s overall tone/mood?
Next: Once you have explored the visual elements of the story or film and come up with some ideas to write about, take each aspect of the imagery (its effect on the story, its effect on the characters, how it helps create the sound/mood) and individually write about these things (these could become your separate body paragraphs).
Lastly: Combine all of what you’ve uncovered into a single thought, a thesis, or a claim of what you’ve discovered.
Logistics:
Stay professional in your writing. Don’t be wordy. Using “I” is welcomed in this assignment, but you should not overdue it. The FINAL DRAFT of your essay should be MLA format, which means double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point font, with 1-inch margins. You should have a Works Cited page and in text citations when you either summarize or quote directly from the story.
