Discuss the use of imagery in two stories of your choice. How do the various images work in a particular story to bring its subject matter into focus? Is there a central image? And how does this enhance or confuse or complicate the effect of the story?

Short fiction can be seen as a literary medium through which the writer concisely creates a story that is almost as fleeting in its detail, as it is in its length of words. Imagery can be used in varying manners depending on what the writer is trying to achieve. In the short story ‘Sleepy’ by Anton Chekhov, we see a more vivid and palpable type of imagery that’s almost figurative and has the ability to lull the reader into sharing the protagonist’s feelings rather than just her surroundings. On the contrary, Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Her First Ball’, utilises strong, descriptive imagery that paints the setting, and the events occurring within, rather than bluntly focusing on the feelings associated with them.
In ‘Sleepy’, Chekhov successfully evokes a strong feeling of the setting without being superfluous in his description. He provides an image of the tiny room at the beginning of the story and reinforces it throughout. In doing so, Chekhov portrays Varka’s painfully scarce reality to emphasise the huge contrast between the immediate scenario and the imagery describing her flustered dreams. It’s Varka’s need for sleep that seems to be the subject matter throughout the narrative, her exhaustion and inability to stay awake and focus on the baby, the driving emotion behind these dreams and the reason her murder of the child seems almost acceptable. In making her dreams active, whilst she in the end is almost passive, Chekhov makes the relief of being rid of “the baby that binds her hand and foot” palpable, such that its completely understood by the reader. Chekhov creates an overpowering exhaustion that paints Varka