What is an example of imagery in "My Dungeon Shook"?

In the second paragraph of James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew, the author speaks of his relationship with his brother.  Here we have many images of the nephew’s father as a young child, and of Baldwin in the role of older brother.  “I have…carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders,” Baldwin writes, “kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk.”  The author states that if you have seen someone grow...

In the second paragraph of James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew, the author speaks of his relationship with his brother.  Here we have many images of the nephew’s father as a young child, and of Baldwin in the role of older brother.  “I have…carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders,” Baldwin writes, “kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk.”  The author states that if you have seen someone grow up as he has seen his brother grow, you start to understand the effects of time and pain from a different point of view, and he states that when he sees his brothers face, he is seeing every face that his brother has worn at every stage of his life. 

“Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember….Let him curse and I see him falling down the cellar steps, and howling, and I remember, with pain, his tears, which my hand or your grandmother’s so easily washed away.”

Here we have imagery of the author’s youth with his younger brother, linked indelibly to the present for each of them; those tears easily wiped away as a child parallel those more permanent, “invisible” ones, caused by the oppression of African-Americans in the twentieth century and crimes against them committed in the name of hate.  These images also reveal the tight-knit family into which James (the nephew) was born, and gives the boy – and the reader – context for understanding the relationships within this family.  In addition, it reveals the multi-generational struggle of African-Americans in the United States, a struggle in which "it is the innocence which constitutes the crime."

This is a very important and revealing letter, beautifully written, and I recommend reading it for yourself – it is not very long, and within its six paragraphs dwell a myriad of images, and an even greater number of truths.