Imagery in this quote is used to describe Jim Burden’s first experience with winter weather on the farm. Jim Burden is describing his observations depicting the winter season. Moreover, this serves as a way of seeing how the landscape changes around Jim Burden on the farm. The pond freezes over, and the once clear sky now looks like a sheet of metal looming in the air. It is almost as if the flakes of snow are encompassing everything around the farm, and that everything around the farm is succumbing to the cold. The impactful nature of winter is fully encompassed within this passage. It reflects how farming based life style, like the one of frontiersmen, must conform to the cold of the winter. The landscapes are changing, and so to must the
