Bad Boy- Literary Device Admiration

  One thing I feel that Walter Deam Myers did really well is his use of imagery. One particular quote caught my eye, and I used it as my passage picker quote from week 1. It says, "we piled into the old Buick and made our way to the Bronx, where Aunt Nancy now lived. The apartment was cluttered with little porcelain figures, decorative plates, and ashtrays from various nightclubs. When we arrived, my aunt was crying loudly, her face contorted with grief. I had never seen that much sadness before, and the smells that permeated the apartment- liniment smells, stale tobacco, a pot of pepper rice and cloves on the stove- added a heavy weight to the atmosphere."
  This quote is talking about when Walter and his father went to their aunt's house because his uncle Lee had been killed during the night. This was a great use of imagery that he used, and I felt like it really enhanced what he was saying and describing. This also helped me connect with his Aunt; I really connected with how she felt and the vivid use of details made me imagine the scene as if I was there. Another example of imagery is, "Bellevue was a city hospital, huge in dimension and unbelievably depressing. The walls of the long corridor where I was sent might once have been green, but as I sat on a wooden bench, waiting for the Joker to call me in for the next test, they were grimy gray with patches where the paint had peeled off, serving as landmarks for the roaches that scurried on irregular routes from floor to ceiling." This was when Walter was sent to do some tests of his intelligence after he had missed over thirty days of school. He was caught by his mom and Walter was allowed to stay at the school he went to as long as he could be supervised by a city agency. The use of imagery showed just how grim his situation was by explaining where he was and how gross it was.
  Imagery is a great thing to do in memoirs and something I will definitely do in mine. It helps you further picture a scene or character in your mind and can bridge the gap between the author's words and you. Imagery can really bring a book to life rather than it being words on paper.