Uses of Imagery

"In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. Through the darkness and the tender trees we could see arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards—presumably because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy." Here, Humbert physicalizes his memory of Annabel. It appears to him "like playing cards," a way for him to explain to himself why they don't appear exactly true. His memory is almost out of order, like a deck of cards that needs shuffling. "We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country, that, by then, in retrospect, was no more than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires and her sobs in the night—every night, every night—the moment I feigned sleep." The journey is a humongous, disgusting slug, leaving a trail of slime able to defile an entire country! Here, Humbert is honest with himself and the reader. The ugly metaphor is apt to describe what the ugly act he is committing. He isn't convincing himself of anything; he's being fully truthful.