Foreshadowing
Imagery is used as a subtle foreshadowing device very early in the novel with a reference that would still make sense even if it the story turned out completely different. The initial setting of the story is a school that is specifically for the teaching of and training in marine sciences. It would therefore make sense for that school to reference the writer of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea even if it didn’t turn out that the novel becomes integral to the plot of this story:
“Finally we pass Verne Hall, the ‘gold-level’ research wing. What goes on in there, I have no idea. We won’t be allowed entry until we’re juniors. Verne’s gilded metal facade stands out among the campus’s white buildings like a gold-crowned tooth. Its dark glass doors always seem to taunt me. If you were cool enough, like your brother, you might be able to come inside. HA-HA-HA-HA.”
Lists
Lists can be an effective use of imagery. If the list specifically applies to things which a character needs or actions which are required, for instance, the imagery contributes to creating a sense of being. In this example, the list becomes imagery which helps to define for the reader the setting in which it takes place:
“How to make twenty freshmen hyperactive:
1 Give them access to an espresso machine.
2 Offer them a safe haven after seventy-two hours of running from death.
3 Feed them a home-cooked meal made by an orangutan.
4 Tell them that tomorrow, they will get to see a make-believe submarine from the 1800s that is actually not make-believe.”
The Aronnax
The Aronnax is a presented over the course of its initial introduction to the reader as not just a thing of mystery to them, but a thing of mystery to the characters. Some of them have no idea what this weird-sounding thing is (which is another reference to Verne’s novel by the way) while some know something of it, but mostly through rumor and legend. The result is that tension is created and intensified by the idea of what it may be more than the reality of what it may be:
“I don’t know what the Aronnax is. The name alone makes me shiver. It sounds sharp and heavy like a cleaver’s blade…I feel a coldness in my belly that’s as sharp as the edge of a fillet knife. I wonder if the Aronnax crew talked about Dev and me this way before they destroyed our school, as if we were nothing more than impersonal targets…He doesn’t need to remind me of Caleb South’s warning. The Aronnax will send us all to the bottom of the sea. In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve heard a lot of things I had trouble believing. Caleb’s threat wasn’t one of them.”
The Nautilus
Of course, the much more famous submarine that can’t be utilized with imagery about what it doesn’t look like is Captain Nemo’s weird vessel in Verne’s novel. The Walt Disney movie adaptation and subsequent attraction at its theme parks embedded the strange appearance of the Nautilus into the minds of several generations. And for those who haven’t ever seen it, it is merely a case of precise description:
“It appears to be tube-shaped – I remember Jules Verne described it as a giant cigar – but it is neither black nor low profile. Its hull is made from interlocking panels of nemonium, glistening like abalone shell. Intricate coils run along its sides, interspersed with bristly clusters of filaments and rows of indentations…Even more unsettling are the Nautilus ’s eyes. I can’t think of what else to call them. Set in the ship’s bow are two transparent convex ovals latticed with metal girders, like the compound eyes of an insect.”
