Imagery and Figurative Language

Imagery is language that appeals to the five senses. Riding alongside it are three core figurative devices: simile (a comparison using "like" or "as"), metaphor (a direct comparison stating one thing IS another), and personification (giving human qualities to something non-human). An extended metaphor is a metaphor sustained and developed across multiple lines or an entire poem, adding new, consistent detail rather than being used once and dropped.

Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" builds exactly one metaphor -- hope as a bird perched inside a person -- and develops it stanza by stanza: the bird sings "the tune without the words," it never stops "at all," it endures the "chillest land" and the "strangest Sea," and it asks almost nothing in return. Each detail is consistent with the bird image and adds something the previous line had not yet said.