The Imagery of Sears Department-“ Old Habits”
The narrator states, “I wander through Sears department store for a bit, past a pyramid of shiny boxes with action heroes peeking out of their cellophane windows, another one of hard-bodied girl dolls with permanently pointed toes and tight pink clothing, past a rack of identical women’s cashmere sweaters in different colors; purple, black, red and green. The sign on the rack reads 30% off, today only! It’s Christmas season.” The Sears department store is in a ‘Ghost Mall’ where the narrator is drifting. The Imagery depicts a standard mall with conventional goods such as heroes, dolls and sweaters. The ghost mall is almost comparable to the familiar malls where the living people accomplish errands such as shopping.
The Imagery of Ghosts-“ Old Habits”
The narrator elucidates, “Unable to hold the need in check, unable to do anything but shout it in shuddering, hungry voices, we demand to be fed. Kitty, surrounded, looks from one to the other of us, tries to answer our questions, but they come too hard and fast for her to reply. Our hollow shrieks draw the other ghosts. They come flocking in, clamoring, more and more of them as word goes round. We’re all demanding to know what she can smell, demanding that she describe it in every last detail, clawing our fingers through the essence of her as we try in vain to touch her. “The ghosts are pervasive in the “ghost malls.”The flock of ghosts at the mall represents an imagery of incorporeal creatures whose deprivation has been roused by Kitty’s assertions regarding the sense of smell. Kitty is exceptional for she retains a sense that they are deficient of.
The Imagery of the Snake and the bird- “The Glass Bottle Trick”
The imagery of the snake and the bird activates Beatrice’s responsiveness. Hopkinson explicates, “A bird screeched from the guava tree, a tiny kiskedee, crying angrily, “Dit, dit, qu’est-ce qu’il dit!” A small snake was coiled around one of the upper branches, just withdrawing its head from the bird’s nest. Its jaws were distended with the egg it had stolen. It swallowed the egg whole, throat bulging hugely with its meal. The bird hovered around the snake’s head, giving its pitiful wail of, “Say, say, what’s he saying!” The bird’s cries are a clarion plea that arouses Beatrice’s sentiment of compassion. Consequently, Beatrice responds by chasing the snake way so that it can cease marauding on the exposed bird’s eggs. The imagery elicits a seminal moment that shifts the course of Beatrice’s life.
The Imagery of the Duppy Wives -“The Glass Bottle Trick”
Hopkinson writes, “The fog split into two, settled over the heads of each woman, began to take on definition. Each misty column had a face, contorted in rage. The faces were those of the bodies on the bed. One of the duppy women leaned over her own corpse. She lapped like a cat at the blood thawing on its breast. She became a little more solid for having drunk of her own life blood. The other duppy stooped to do the same. The two duppy women each had a belly slightly swollen with the pregnancies for which Samuel had killed them.” The imagery of the ghostly wives is characterizes death. Although the imagery is petrifying; it opens Beatrice’s eyes to the top-secret that her husband has been camouflaging in the two bottles. The portrayal of the pregnancy exposes the basis of the wives’ current scenario. Perhaps, if they had not been expectant, their situations would have been not the same.
