A New Noise (Auditory Imagery)
When Klausner tests his sound machine by swinging an axe at a tree, he hears through his headphones "a new noise, unlike any he [has] heard before—a harsh, noteless, enormous noise, a growling, low-pitched, screaming sound, not quick and short like the noise of the roses, but drawn out like a sob lasting for fully a minute, loudest at the moment when the axe struck, fading gradually fainter and fainter until it was gone." In this example of auditory imagery, Dahl emphasizes the resonant, drawn-out nature of the sound by describing the sound in a multi-clausal sentence that is long and drawn-out itself.
Distant Humming (Auditory Imagery)
In another example of auditory imagery, Dahl describes the ambient sounds Klausner hears when he first turns on his machine: "Behind this crackling sound he could hear a distant humming tone which was the noise of the machine itself, but that was all." In providing this imagery, Dahl makes the details of the story realer and immerses the reader in Klausner's perspective.
