Wyatt-1

Colby Wyatt
Mrs. Simon
Language Arts 3-4 H
March 3, 2013
Literary Analysis Summative
Marcus Zusak and Pavel Friedman both use imagery in their pieces of writing to establish
tone. In The Book Thief, Zusak creates imagery through describing the sky. He says the sky
remained a devastating, home-cooked red. This creates a scene of the bombs and the smoke
and ashes that blanket the sky. He creates confusion within this piece through his description of
the bombs. The sirens. The cuckoo shrieks in the radio, makes you imagine hearing the sirens,
and imagining the confusion of the citizens, running rapidly through the street, trying to get to
safety. Then he goes on to describe the deaths, that there were mounds of concrete and earth
stacked and piled, and that blood streamed till it was dried on the road, and the bodies were
stuck there. Reading this can help you picture the scene, with all the bodies scattered in piles of
blood. All of these examples of imagery create a sorrowful tone that makes you feel the sadness
and fear that the character feels.
In The Butterfly, Friedman uses imagery by describing the butterfly. He describes it as
richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow, allowing you to see the vivid yellow of the metaphoric
butterfly. The man who lives in the ghetto pronounces that the dandelions call to me, and the
white chestnut candles in the court. This makes you feel the pain he feels, as he is alone with
only non-realistic things to keep him company. This story also creates a tone of dismal, as he is
only within the ghetto and he shows his loneliness by claiming that no butterflies live in the
ghetto. Both authors utilize their imagery to institute tone that depresses the reader.