Colors
A woman tells Yael about her husband, the dollmaker, and the vivid colors he used in making those dolls. "Ruby red, grass green, blue so deep you think you’re looking at the sky. Yellow like butter. Or the sun.” Yael, a Jewish victim of Nazi atrocities who lived her entire life under the oppressive thumb of fascism cannot even imagine these connotations. Red to her means blood and since she has never even seen grass, green means nothing. Color imagery is used to illustrate the precious quality of everyday things one takes for granted when one is free.
Aryans
Nazism was all about the supposed superiority of the Aryan "race" which does not exist because race is a social construct, not a genetic determiner. The visual imagery of the Aryan ideal is integral to the plot as well. At one point propaganda posters are described as "reminding strong blond Aryan children to attend Hitler Youth. Reminding their mothers to produce more strong blond Aryan children to attend Hitler Youth." This use of imagery is subtly effective in a way that may not be obvious. The repetition of "strong blond Aryan children" does not just visually pinpoint the idea of the Nazi ideal of physical perfection.
Sound
One of the most inspiring uses of imagery in the novel is the example of synesthesia which combines completely separate senses to paint a vivid emotional moment for a character. "The boy’s voice sounded as hot as the kettle. Hissing syllables. Boiling consonants." The imagery gains its power not from what is being described, but from the incongruence of the descriptive terms. The writer is asking readers to imagine an emotional moment so tense and fragile and meaningful that sound can become hot and language itself is on the verge of exploding into something potentially dangerous. In addition, the writer even introduces an element of poetry with an alliterative quality suggesting how the syllables seethe from the boy's mouth.
Prose Poetry
The boy's semi-poetic mixture of sensory details into a seemingly impossible use of imagery is immediately preceded by behavior on the part of a girl that is pure poetry. "The girl’s jaw tightened along with her fist. Melting ice seeped through the cracks in her knuckles like tears." This use of imagery to describe the emotional tension of a moment which can only create a confusing reaction on the part of the boy is a language far more likely to be found in a poem than a novel. The ice is no more literal than the cracks in her knuckles or the tears. It is an example of imagery comprised of pure metaphorical language. What makes it so effective is that it is used to directly comment upon the entirely literal action of the girl's jaw and fist simultaneously contracting.
