Imagery in Neuromancer

“Shadows twisted as the holograms swung through their dance. Then the fear began to knot between his shoulders. A cold trickle of sweat worked its way down and across his ribs. The operation hadn't worked.  He was still here, still meat.” (Gibson 37).

When Gibson talks about people who are

100% human he wants you to think of them as meat. 

In other words just flesh and nothing more.

“But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.” (Gibson 5).

Although these quotes have no relation as far as the content is concerned, both quotes demonstrate the type of atmosphere the characters live in through the use of imagery. The key word in the first quote is meat.  It is there to better describe a person that has not had any biomechanical surgery. It is referenced throughout the novel and gives the reader the understanding that people that have not had any biomechanical surgery are often the lessers of their society. In the second quote Gibson uses dark imagery by using words such as night, voodoo, dark, and coffin to give the reader the impression that the surrounding is somewhat grungy.