Cuckoo (Auditory Imagery)
The cuckoo's call frequently appears in the story, and at its climax, Joe hears the cuckoo call over and over again. Garner represents the cuckoo call through onomatopoeia, a literary technique where a sound is written to mimic the sound it makes in real life. The cuckoo's presence becomes a form of imagery, since its call is written out and repeated. At the end of the story, the "cuckoo" is written out many times, as "Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo..." and so on, which even more strongly conveys the strength and overwhelming presence of the cuckoo's call.
Noony (Auditory, Visual Imagery)
The train that Joe uses to tell the time, Noony, is an example of both auditory and visual imagery. Joe often describes the train "rattling" past, conveying its auditory qualities and the sounds it makes as it goes by his house. He also describes seeing the train outside of the window. Noony's common reappearance in the story conveys the train's function as a stable point in Joe's understanding of time.
Thin Amren (Visual Imagery)
Thin Amren is described in highly visual language; his face is "copper brown," and as he emerges from the bog, he is covered in leaves, water dripping down from his body. Because Thin Amren emerges from a bog, he is also naked, and wears only a leather hood. All of this evocative imagery paints a clear picture of Thin Amren for the reader, which is also makes Thin Amren a potential historical allusion to bog bodies.
Cold passing through the mirror (Tactile Imagery)
As Joe passes through the mirror, he feels an overwhelming cold that leaves him in such strong pain that by the end, he screams out. The pain builds as he passes back and forth several times, each time describing how cold the mirror feels and how intensely it shocks his body. This imagery is key to the novel's atmospheric tension surrounding the final scenes.
