Literary Aspects, Imagery

Per Petterson has become one of my favorite authors in just the past two weeks due to a multitude of things. There is one part of his writing that stands out from the rest is his use of imagery in the book Out Stealing Horses. The post we had to do last week on setting is a good example of imagery. My quote for setting can be used for imagery, "There were trees on the land my father had bought as well as a pasture. Mostly spruce, but pine as well, and here and there a slim birch was almost squeezed in between the darker trunks, and all of them grew right down the river bank, where in some mysterious way a wooden cross had been nailed up on a pine tree that grew at the edge of the pebbles, almost overhanging the rushing water," (49). I don't know about you, but this quote gives me a great visual of Trond's fathers pasture. "Down the road and across the river, past Lars' cottage and out onto the main road through the forest, I see the lake sparkling through the trees on the right until suddenly it is behind me, and then it's across the an open plain of yellow, long-since harvested fields on both sides. There are large flocks of crows flying over the fields. They make no sound in the sunlight. At the other end of the plain a sawmill lies beside a river, wider than the one I can see from my house but flowing into the same lake," (64). This is a pretty long quote but it gets the job done. It gives you an exceptional visual of what Trond is seeing and is straight to the point without filler sentences. The biggest pet peeve of mine are filler sentences like useless similes or metaphors because as a reader you can make your own relationships between certain things. Imagery in this book by Per Petterson gives the book an element that many books I have read seem to be missing. In my mind imagery is one of the most important aspects of a book because if the author uses it well it gives the reader the "walking in another persons shoes" effect, making the reader a part of the story.