The Opening
The opening page is imagery that efficiently situates the premise of the story. What is most striking is how precise the imagery is: the exact time, location, climate, activity and stimulus for the entire narrative is laid out in in less than forty words:
“On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing...enjoying the jungle’s greatest joys…
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.”
But Just How Small?
The most famous line from the story is “a person’s a person, no matter how small.” Just how small those persons are whose needs Horton responds to in an almost Pavlovian way is conveyed through the imagery of Horton’s own empathetic nature:
“Some sort of creature of very small size,
Too small to be seen by an elephant’s eyes…
…some poor little person who’s shaking with fear
That he’ll blow in the poo! He has no way to steer!”
The Chase
This story has everything, including an action scene. A chase through an ominous blue landscape with Horton’s right eye the only small pinprick of glowing light situates the seriousness, the commitment and the danger all at once. And the text provides verbal imagery to complement the singularly dark foreboding coloring of the illustration:
“All that late afternoon and far into the night
That black-bottomed bird flapped his wings in fast flight,
While Horton chased after, with groans, over stones
That tattered his toenails and battered his bones.”
The Horror
After the chase finally ends and Horton relocates the lost clover on which the speck of dust in which the Who civilization exists, Horton is heartbroken to learn the extent of the devastation that was unleashed as a result of his losing control of the clover. It is the Mayor himself who provides a portrait of the extent of this devastation through a litany of imagery:
“When that black-bottomed birdie let go and we dropped,
We landed so hard that our clocks all have stopped.
Our tea-pots are broken. Our rocking-chairs smashed.
And our bicycle tires all blew up when we crashed.”
