Cranes (Visual Imagery)
Powers opens the novel with an evocative image of cranes landing on the river in Kearney: "Cranes keep landing as night falls. Ribbons of them roll down, slack against the sky. They float in from all compass points, in kettles of a dozen, dropping with the dusk." This visual imagery paints the beauty of their collective flight while also showing the patterns of their mass migratory behavior.
Bacon (Olfactory Imagery)
Lost in the thought, Weber returns to his immediate surroundings as he sits in a small restaurant in Kearney: "Weber snapped back to the restaurant, the smell of bacon grease." This olfactory imagery serves to show Weber being pulled away from his anxieties about his marriage and career back to the present, as the scent of food makes him recall his immediate needs.
Crane Calls (Auditory Imagery)
The narrator describes the call of the cranes: "They make a sound prehistoric, too loud and carrying for their body size." This auditory imagery dramatically depicts the cranes, solidifying the impression that they are strange, unearthly beings, tapped into a "prehistoric" version of nature.
Clawing the Wheel (Haptic Imagery)
As Karin drives through the night to go see Mark, she grips the steering wheel tightly: "Her hands, stiff and blue, clawed the wheel as she slipped through the reservations." This haptic imagery shows her crushing worry about Mark's condition as well as the urgency with which she goes to him.
