“a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words” Essay Example
- Pages: 2 (488 words)
- Published: May 15, 2017
- Type: Essay
“A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words” Imagery is the use of rich vivid descriptions in literal scripts to create pictorial images in the reader’s mind. Hence, these mental illustrations produced by imagination are deliberately simulated by the author’s nib to give more weight to his/her specific ideas. British novelist Jeanette Winterson, best known for Orange Are Not The Only Fruit, perfectly handles the art of imagery, especially in her short story Newton where the topics of conformity and individual oppression are enhanced by the use of rhetorical images.
Imagery is firstly utilized to compare the ordinary citizens of the town to a figure of royal authority. As the protagonist Tom is leading an individuality revolution against his town, he is constantly wrecked by the modern society ideology as a thief incarcerated by the
iron grip of a kingdom’s tyrant. In fact, Tom’s woman neighbour is characterized as a queen with “her hair coiled on her head like a wreath on a war memorial” (§10).
Likewise, the “dinner table, a table that […] extends … and extends … through a jagged hole blown in the side of the house” (§19) refers to a royal feast where powerful people sit and discuss the future of the county. Imagery is also employed to separate the main character from the mass. The book “L’etranger” written by Albert Camus is truly a haven for Tom. Indeed, the book is the only philosophical companion of the protagonist. However, its pages are blanked at the end during the supper (§19), like a complete brainwash of his own memory.
The refrigerator episode similarly shows the absurdity of Tom and the necessary stifling order of the
mechanical society. In fact, the woman mentions “those are the rules” (§14) like the solemn voice of destiny that cannot be contradicted. Winterson also uses black humour imagery to enhance the morbidity and absurdity of individuality. Corpses are ironically laminated instead of buried and vouchers are given for “every successful lamination” (§16). Additionally, the exploding chicken “pelting the neighbour with eggs like hand grenades” destroys the neighbour’s arm, but “nobody notices” (§19).
Individual behaviour is therefore trivialized to pave the way for conformity and death, the fundamental doctrines of Newton. Thus, the use of imagery in Newton heightens the notion that every citizen is shedding his human behaviour at the hands of an artificial conformist society extolling individual oppression. By employing rhetorical images, the author succeeded in creating pictures in the reader’s mind that help understanding the general themes of the short story. 450 words Authenticity Declaration I confirm that this writing is my own work.
I have acknowledged all the words or ideas of another person.
- “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit”, Jeanette Winterson (online), jeanettewinterson. com/books/orangesarenottheonlyfruit. asp, accessed on December 1, 2011.
- ROCK, Claudia and PHADKE, Suneeti. “Style and Substance (Second Edition)”, Quebec, ERPI Editions, Pearson Longman, 2007, p. 140 to 144. The reader may refer to the aforementioned document for quotes.
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A picture is worth a thousand words
| Grammarist
The proverb a picture is worth a thousand words is probably not as old as you think. A proverb is a short, common saying or phrase. It particularly gives advice or shares a universal truth. We will examine the definition of the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words , where the expression came from as well as some examples of its use in sentences.
The phrase a picture is worth a thousand words means a picture may convey an idea more quickly and effectively than the written word. Writers of texts that describe concepts involving imagery or abstract thoughts need many words to get their points across. A photograph, artwork, drawing or graphics can often demonstrate an idea with one look, much more quickly than a narrative can explain things. A photograph or artwork may depict emotion, enabling the viewer to perceive the essence of the story without a word being written or spoken. Readers of articles or books must engage in a large amount of effort to mentally process the words in order to understand what the writer is trying to convey. Someone who simply views an image can capture the essence of the meaning of that image without a lot of explaining. The viewer may gain some insight from an image, however, even photographs are open to interpretation. A photographer may crop the picture, leaving out a factor that may be of some importance. He may highlight a point of view that does not tell the whole story. The viewer may not understand the context of what he is looking at, where a literary essay or some other written text may explain things more fully. While the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words has been labeled as a Chinese proverb and attributed to the philosopher, Confucius, in fact it is an American expression. The idea seems to have first been put forth around the turn of the twentieth century by a newspaper editor Tess Flanders, discussing strategies in publishing, editing and news reporting. The term was popularized in the 1920s by Fred R. Barnard, who is often credited with the origin of the proverb. He used the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words to discuss the use of drawn and photographic images to illustrate advertising. It was Barnard who ascribed the proverb to the Chinese, and later, the Japanese. He also used the term a picture is worth ten thousand words , though one thousand is the current quantity used in the expression. The phrase a picture is worth a thousand words is usually referring to a physical illustration, but it is occasionally used as an exhortation to use description in one’s writing, rather than simply reciting facts.
Examples They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what happens when a photo’s caption is said to be untrue? ( Lancaster Farming) The inspiration for my project, “A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: Using Art to Study Culture and History,” came when I taught 10th-graders in an advanced English class specific to the Cambridge International program. ( The Herald Tribune ) “It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words,” U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III wrote above three pictures depicting mice near and, in one case, resting on top of the device. (USA Today) If “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then think of the slide as the thousand words you won’t have time to say — a supportive addition to your words. ( Forbes Magazine )
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