Imagery Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys Ms. Jenigar’s 9 th Grade Language Arts Class
What is Imagery? • Imagery is a literary device that evokes the five senses in order to create a vivid mental picture • Refresher: What are the five senses? • Sight • Touch • Sound • Smell • Taste
Imagery • Sight • Touch • The first beams of sunlight • Sand between your toes on creeping through your blinds the beach in the morning • Winter wind mercilessly whipping against your cheeks • Sound • Smell • The hollow clash of thunder • The warm scent of baking echoing through your head cookies wrapping around you like a hug • Crickets singing outside your window on a hot summer night • The overpowering stench of garbage ambushing your nose • Taste • The sterile, grainy taste in your mouth after your brush your teeth • The warm comfort in the first bite of Thanksgiving turkey
Imagery • Your turn! Give some examples of vivid images.
So, Why is it Effective? • What does imagery add to a text? • Why is it important? • What does it take for an image to be effective?
Guided Imagery • A guided imagery essay is a piece of writing in which the writer guides the reader through a scene, transporting him or her to a different place through the use of vivid images. Wilhelm, Jeffrey. D. “You Gotta BE the Book”: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with Adolescents. 2nd ed. New York, 2008.
Close your eyes. Clear your mind. Imagine you are in a land far, far away, oceans away from this classroom. You can hear the clicking of train tracks in the distance; listen as the sound gets louder and louder. You hear worried whispers, whimpers, cries, and moans. The room around you transforms, and suddenly you’re contained in a tiny box—a train car. The walls are made of deteriorating wood, solid all around and blocking and light from seeping in. You sit in utter darkness, barely able to make out the person next to you. You can feel the frigidness of the dirt floor beneath you creeping up through your bones; you see bits of debris, dead bugs, and litter surrounding the place you sit. Beside you is your younger brother; he tries to smile at you as he swats at the gnats and flies buzzing about his head. His blonde hair is matted with oil and dirt, and you can see that he desperately needs a shower. You wonder what you look like. But it doesn’t matter—packed around you are forty-six people who are just as unclean as you and your brother. You sit, side-by-side with barely an inch to move, packed into the tiny care like sardines in a tin can. You’re afraid to move because with each and every twitch, everyone around you is forced to move too. The air is heavy with the sharply sour stench of sweat and human body odor. Someone across the car that you cannot see begins to retch, and the sounds ring hollowly around your ears. Soon the odor of vomit mingles with the scents of human feces and urine hanging over your head like a cloud of noxious fumes. The air is still with waiting, the heat of the car heavy on your chest like a dumbbell. Suddenly someone pries open the train door and leaps from the car. There is a wave of hope—you think of freedom, of escaping this tiny jail cell, of reuniting with your father and returning to your cozy home in Kaunas—but those feelings are shattered as shouts in a strange, harsh language are barked and three gunshots ring through the air. The train car is suddenly silent and still. You realize that there is no escape— this is your reality now.
Your Turn! • Your assignment is to write your own guided imagery essay. Using the handout as a guide to your writing, select a scene from Between Shades of Gray and prepare to walk us through it. • The handout I am passing out now is your prewriting exercise; use it to frame your work before you begin. • Refer to your direction sheet and rubric for more information!
Ms. Jenigar Name _________________________ Guided Imagery and Between Shades of Gray Select one scene from the novel and use it to fill in the following worksheet. This will help you brainstorm for your essay and outline your ideas prior to beginning your essay. Scene (make sure to include direct quotations lifted from the text, chapter, and page numbers): Chapter 10, pages 35-37: “I counted the people—forty-six packed in a cage on wheels, maybe a rolling coffin…Jonas swatted flies away from his face and hair...Hours passed like long days. People cried of heat and hunger. The bald man griped about his pain while others tried to organize the space and luggage…The sounds and smells made my head spin.” Now, using that scene, make a list of images that this scene elicited when you read it. Make sure to use descriptive, vivid language in each image, trying to create a specific scene that the reader will be able to visualize easily. people cramped like cattle or sardines in a tin; flies buzzing around your Sights : head; dirt floors crumbling beneath your feet; tightly packed quarters with barely an inch to move; layer of dust over everything and everyone; darkness people crying out in pain and hunger; gunshots from outside that make Sounds : you cringe and fear for your life; muffled yells and orders from outside; buzzing flies and other bugs constantly in your ear; whispers; retching; crying dryness stickiness and thickness of tongue from dehydration; empty/bitter Tastes : taste from lack of food salty, sour scent of human sweat; the sharp stench of vomit swirling around Smells : in the heat; the odor of feces and urine hanging over the car like a cloud of noxious fumes; sour scent of blood; mustiness and dust choking you dirt and dust under your fingernails; bodies packed in side-by-side; Touches : rigidness of the wooden walls of the car making your back stiff; stillness of nonmoving air hanging around you; thick heat from being packed in so closely with other people
After you have come up with some images to help readers visualize your selected scene, discuss why you have selected this scene to write about. What is so important about it, and what does the reader’s ability to visualize this particular scene do to enrich the text? This scene is important because it discusses the conditions that Lina Rationale: and her family must face when they are taken prisoner. It’s important that readers are able to visualize this scene in order to show the contrast between Lina’s past and her present. In addition, most people have not experienced a situation like this, and it may be hard for them to visualize it; for that reason, I have created a guided imagery for this scene to help readers put themselves in Lina’s shoes and imagine the horrors she and her family had to face on the train.
Sample of Bonus Opportunity This painting reminded me of the darkness and feelings of constriction, desolation, and despair that I experienced when reading the scene. The dark colors, limited empty space, and faces and expressions of the people and animals in the work made me think of the way the train car might feel to Lina and her companions. Picasso, Pablo. Guernica. 1937. Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid. PabloPicasso.org. Web.
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