Cages and Mazes
What’s a lab rat’s life like? You know the routine: wake up in a cage, head to the office that’s like a maze or something, run around the corridors like crazy and all for what? Just a lousy piece of cheese at the end. Imagery is used to quickly and efficiently situate why of the “rat race” even its most literal sense:
“You might ask: Why would I bother to run through it at all, if I knew it was only a trick? The answer is I couldn't help it. When you've lived in a cage, you can't bear not to run, even if what you're running toward is an illusion.”
The Owl and the Tree
Imagery is utilized extremely effectively to convey the concept of inevitably entropy, decay and change during the conversation with the owl. The owl responds to Mrs. Frisby’s notion that such animals have no Moving Day because of the stolidity and seeming immortality of the forest. The owl’s response suggests otherwise, that in everything there is a season:
"I have lived in this tree, in this same hollow…for more years than anyone can remember. But now, when the wind blows hard in winter and rocks the forest, I sit here in the dark, and from deep down in the bole, down near the roots, I hear a new sound. It is the sound of strands of wood creaking in the cold and snapping one by one. The limbs are falling; the tree is old, and it is dying…One of these days, one of these years, the tree will fall, and when it does, if I am still alive, I will fall with it."
Evolution in a Nutshell
One particularly impressive bit of imagery boils down millions of years of evolution into just a few lines. The facts presented are perhaps questionable, but the concept is certainly intriguing. And the rationality of the theory is beyond corruption; maybe this really is how it happened:
“Millions of years ago…rats seemed to be ahead of all the other animals, seemed to be making a civilization of their own…well organized and built quite complicated villages in the fields. Their descendants today are the rats known as prairie dogs. But somehow it didn't work out…while the other animals (especially the monkeys) were living in the woods and getting tougher and smarter, the prairie dogs grew soft and lazy...Eventually the monkeys came out of the woods, walking on their hind legs, and took over the prairies and almost everything else. It was then that the rats were driven to become scavengers and thieves”
Escape
The details of the sweetness of escape from oppressive bondage are provided partially through imagery as a means of conveying the distinct divergence between circumstances of captivity and freedom. In cases such as these, the most effective imagery tends to be the simplest. Usually, it is better to describe the smells or sounds of freedom rather than struggling to formulate the philosophy of it:
“It was early summer when we got out. We had known that beforehand—we could tell by the lateness of the light through the windows, though it was dark when we finally stood on the roof. We had no trouble getting down the side of the building, however…staying in the darkest shadows, under the bushes when we could, we sped away from Nimh, not knowing or caring at first what direction we were going. Nobody saw us.”
