Emily Brontë's Imagery

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The age of eighteen is an invigorating, inexorable, illusive, and very important threshold in an individual's life. It bridges the gap between the past and the yet unforeseeable future. It steals a person from their innocent past and places them onto a road of reality. Left there with no haven in sight, the person's only choice is to walk through life's journey. Brontë beautifully characterizes the phases of life her protagonist is leaving and entering by utilizing pertinent personifications and descriptive imagery. Brontë exquisitely describes the vivid, more fictional pre-eighteen life while also highlighting the imminent difficulties that come from experience. The most discernible literary technique used by Brontë is her use of personifications.…show more content…
Brontë uses vivid words and antonymic descriptions in order to signify the inconsistency and wonder of a time before reality. According to Brontë, before the age of eighteen, life is a tale that is " . . . delightful sometimes, and sad sometimes . . ." (4-5) and its setting is a place consisting of "darker woods" (7) but "brighter skies" (8). Brontë uses such antonymic imagery in order to convey the feeling of greatness and extreme that comes from this tale. Life as a child never seems normal, it is always viewed on a spectrum of two great extremes: good or bad, happy or sad, up or down. There are no in-betweens. The descriptive imagery used by Brontë highlights the extremes of the people and settings of a nearly fictional world. In this heroic world, the inhabitants are "half-divine or semi-demon" (6-7) meaning that they are viewed as either godly or evil, beneficial or harmful, friendly or hostile. In addition, this world contains "darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters, sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts, sunnier fields than are found in nature . . ." (7-11). Everything is much greater; life is less diminutive and more fictional before the age of

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