Descriptive Imagery

This refers to the writer’s use of vivid and descriptive language that appeal to the senses in order to add depth to his/her work.

• Description

• Imagery

• Senses

• Symbols

Temperatures, such as bitter cold, humidity, mildness, and stifling heat are words that appeal to _______ sense.

• visual

• tactile

• olfactory

• auditory

Fragrances, such as perfumes, enticing food and drink, and blooming flowers are words that ______ sense.

• gustatory

• olfactory

• tactile

• visual

Patterns, such as: polka-dotted, striped, zig-zagged, jagged, and straight best appeal to _______ imagery.

• auditory

• visual

• olfactory

• tactile

The lack of noise, describing a peaceful calm or eerie silence appeal to ____sense.

• visual

• tactile

• olfactory

• auditory

Read the text below.

"A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."

-"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth

The predominant sensory imagery employed in this paragraph is _________________________________.

Read the text below.

"In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribbling, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, Popsicle, partially gnawed ice cream cones and wooden sticks of lollipops."

-Charlotte's Web

The predominant sensory imagery employed in this paragraph is _________________________________.

Read the text below.

"Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars."

-William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet

The predominant sensory imagery employed in this paragraph is _________________________________.

Read the text below.

" No one was allowed to talk or make a sound when the television was on; all eyes were glued to the moving and flickering image. The box commanded absolute respect.(4) In the daytime, “the television needs its rest” my mother would say, as she patted its pseudo-wooden top and covered it with a doily she had made herself. (5)There is no doubt that TV was as central to our lives as it was to the lives of all our friends during that period.

-Adapted from an essay by Angeline Chan

The predominant sensory imagery employed in this paragraph is/are _________________________________.

Read the text below.

" “It was a miry morning, and very damp. The the damp was lying on the outside of my little window… Then, the damp was lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, … On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there..."

-Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

The predominant sensory imagery employed in this paragraph is _________________________________.