Cambridge English Language and Literature for the IB Diploma

Worksheet 8.4: Chapter 8 imagery and figurative

language

If youve ever had the experience of playing show and tell as a kindergarten pupil, for example, you
might remember that the activity is designed to present a familiar object to peers and practise talking
about that object. Hopefully, in this elementary activity, confidence is gained in the skills of oral
presentations as well as the inquiry-and-response that comes with considering objects of value.
Chapter 8 of the coursebook reminds you, on page 202, of the importance of imagery: good poems
show (in images) more than they tell (in messages). Your individual oral commentaries may supply
more of the telling, so the poet succeeds in message-making when we, as readers, interpret the
imagery well.
In this worksheet you will explore ways in which imagery and figurative language feature in poetry.
Other literary genres also use imagery and figurative language refer to Worksheet 6.2 and/or Text
5.5 on page 129 of the coursebook for a study of Margaret Atwoods fictional prose in The
Handmaids Tale. For the purposes of Chapter 8, however, you will focus on poetry.

Showing through imagery

Text 8.5 on page 204 of the coursebook is vivid in its use of imagery.
Read Grace Nichols poem Beauty several times and then attempt Activity 8.5 to reinforce the notion
that imagery appeals to all senses, not just the sense of sight. In other words, a poem can show
through the smell of a hibiscus flower or the sound of rushing waves.
Now consider the following poem, A Red, Red Rose, by Robert Burns, a Scottish poet who lived in
the second half of the 18th century. His poems are written in a Scottish dialect, and therefore some of
the words will be unfamiliar. Try and work out the meaning of these words for yourself, before
referring to the Glossary on the next sheet.

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luves like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luves like the melodie,
That's sweetly playd in tune.

5 As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a the seas gang dry.

Till a the seas gang dry, my dear,

10 And the rocks melt wi the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!

And fare-thee-weel, a while!
15 And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho twere ten thousand mile!

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Glossary
luve love
bonie pretty
gang gone
a all
wi with
o of
weel well

Use the table below (the same table as found on page 204 of the textbook) to organise the words from
the Burns poem that appeal to all five senses. Add connotations to the imagery you select, to begin the
process of interpreting their value.

Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell

line 4: sweetly line 10: melt

playd like a this image of
delicacy?... molten rock is
visual, too, yet
the solid object
would now slip
through my
fingers (if I
could handle
the heat!)

Notice the use of line numbers, both at the side of the poem and in the student response. Referring to
specific words or phrases (or even punctuation, like the colon in line 2) is helpful for organisation,
assessed as Criterion C in the individual oral commentary.

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Cambridge English Language and Literature for the IB Diploma

Telling through figurative language

Burns poem shows us the power of the speakers love as if it were an epic journey. He also
tells us through simile (lines 1 and 3), personification (line 12), and metonymy (line 2). These
examples of figurative language are defined on page 207 of the coursebook. We can add hyperbole
as well, in the exaggerated distance expressed in the final line: while the speaker might promise to
travel so far, the ten thousand mile is figurative and probably not measurable.
Look again at the definitions of the terms apostrophe and metonymy on page 207 of the
coursebook. Try to apply their effect in the following poem by the English poet William Blake,
writing slightly after Burns in the period covering the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th
centuries.

The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

5 Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Respond to the following questions:

What is Burns showing in this short poem? Does the imagery relay a sort of story?

What is the speaker telling, and whom is he or she addressing?

How is apostrophe by the definition on page 207 of the coursebook a relevant literary
term to apply here? Does personification also fit?

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Cambridge English Language and Literature for the IB Diploma

Readers may understand Blakes poem to be quite literally about a dying flower and a
greedy worm. A question that sometimes concerns students of literature is how much (or
little) to apply figurative ideas to an initial understanding. Must we investigate an allegory to
a human situation, whereby the rose and the worm are representatives of human characteristics?
Robert Frost, whose opening lines from his poem Out, out can be found on page 197 of the
coursebook, may help us answer this question. So many of Frosts poems are set in rural places and
forests, often focusing on plants or animals (as does Blakes poem, above). Yet they all have a human
at the very least observing such nature. And that observer is called a speaker.
Our job as readers is also to observe, and then also to speak a good opportunity to do so is the
individual oral commentary for works in part 4 of the course. Assessment sheet 8.1 may help you with
this.

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