Setting
Bradbury uses imagery to convey the time period in which the story is set. He never explicitly states it; all that is known is that it is a suburb in Scranton. The opening paragraph casually mentions rockets flying overhead and “beetle cars.” While the kids play their game, adults obliviously go about their business repairing “vacuum elevators” and “food-delivery tubes.” Such imagery appears intermittently throughout the story, never drawing attention to itself, content merely to exist for the purpose of allusively informing the reader that the story is taking place in a future not so far distant that suburbs are no longer part of the fabric of society.
A Perfect World
In a story about the importance of conceiving the difference between truth and mere imagination, one single paragraph stands out above all others. It is the longest paragraph in the story and it presents a vision of this futuristic world almost entirely through imagery. The world of the near-future is one of geographical conformity where social relations have been made easier because through the “quiet conceit and easiness of men accustomed to peace, quite certain there would never be trouble again.” History has taught that this conceit, whenever it recurs, is misplaced because it is impossible, yet the fact that the world has a whole has seemingly embraced it stands in direct counterpoint to Mrs. Morris and other parents showing a completely unwillingness to believe that that their young children might be telling the truth.
Inappropriate Language
Imagery in the form of in inappropriate language is used to highlight just how wide the chasm is between mother and daughter. Mrs. Morris is so devoted to maintaining her illusion of her perfect world in which her little daughter simply has an active imagination that she does not even stop to question how far such an imagination could possibly take a 7-year-old without some sort of external influence. In a long section dominated by conversation between mother and daughter, words and phrases are used that Mink clearly does not know, but shouldn’t even be familiar with: fifth column, impregnable, a fourth dimension. The message is loud and clear yet Mrs. Morris is somehow either incapable or unwilling to receive it.
The Sound of Invasion
Near the end, once Mr. Morris has arrived home and his terrified wife has dragged him hysterically into the safety of the attic, the sound of the invasion begins making its way inexorably toward them. It is the sound of the invasion combined with the weird lights and a strange odor that finally convinces him of the danger. The sound of the invasion is presented through the specific type of imagery known onomatopoeia which is a word that seeks to replicate a sound. The sound of the invasion is particularly terrifying to Mr. Morris because it is a humming sound. A humming frequently accompanied by the giggle of children. A combination of sounds very often associated with the image of young children enjoying themselves as they get lost in the world of their imagination.
