Imagery and symbolism in The Wreck of the Deutschland

The richness of Hopkins' imagery

The whole of The Wreck of the Deutschland is full of images; one series of images after another, one layer upon another, so that it is impossible to do justice to its complexity in a few pages of notes. The following gives just a few pointers or signposts.

Hopkins' mind is the most poetic of minds. Despite a training in theology, his language always expresses itself in figures, symbols and allusions. Much of the imagery is figurative, mainly metaphorical; but other images are literal descriptions, forming vivid mental pictures in our imagination, such as the nun's cry or the dead seaman dangling at the end of his rope.

The following survey looks at:

• Nature images
• Biblical images
• Figures of speech