Imagery of darkness
Jim gets assigned to go to the lower vaults of the bank to retrieve valuables that might have been left. It is a dangerous task in the midst of an expected comet, and Jim is not surprised that they choose him. Going down he feels the darkness and blackness, going below the surface of earth. “…down to the dark basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath the lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the earth, under the world.”
Auditory imagery of the crash
While in the lowest vaults in the dark, searching for valuables and discovering large amounts of gold, Jim is suddenly struck by a loud noise of the crash. “Boom.” A low, grinding, reverberating crush struck upon his ear.”
Olfactory and visual imagery of death
Finally, freeing himself from the vault Jim is struck by the terrifying image of death and destruction. There are corpses lying around everywhere in positions that reveal that the death came suddenly and unexpectedly and the air is filled with the smell of death. “The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor.”
Auditory imagery of silence
Going outside into the streets of New York City, Jim is struck with the uneasiness of the silence as a result of the sudden extinguished life. This silence is present throughout the story until the very end, compared to death and evil. “Everywhere was silence and death-death and silence!”
