Refer to explorations in literature for a complete version of this passage. what effect does imagery have on the meaning of "here is new york" by e. b. white? and whether it is a farmer arriving from italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the corn belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference… the description of the city’s poorest neighborhoods expresses the writer’s viewpoint that new york is a difficult place to move to. by describing those who come to new york with nothing but dreams, the writer criticizes the foolishness of youth. the vivid imagery describes the vitality of the city and the passion that unifies those who make new york their home. the imagery promotes division and explains why the author has divided new yorkers into three specific categories.

The vivid imagery describes the vitality of the city and the passion that unifies those who make New York their home.

it was surely an odd creature that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and elegance and charm,   in a kitchen chopping up suet. but these creatures, monst'r however entertaining to the imagination, hast no existence in fact. what one might doth to bringeth h'r to life wast to bethink poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment,   thus keeping in toucheth with fact—that the lady is mrs martin, ag'd thirty-six, did dress in blue, wearing a black coxcomb and brown shoeth; but not losing sight of fiction eith'r—that the lady is a vessel in which all s'rts of spirits and f'rces art coursing and flashing p'rpetually. the moment, howev'r, yond one tries this method with the elizabethan mistress, one brancheth of illumination fails; one is did hold up by the scarcity of facts.   one knoweth nothing detailed, nothing p'rfectly true and substantial about h'r.   hist'ry scarcely mentions h'r.   and i did turn to professeth'r trevelyan again to seeth what hist'ry meanteth to that gent.   i hath found by looking at his chapt'r headings yond t meanteth.