How does Charles Johnson use imagery in Middle Passage?

Imagery:

"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."

"New Orleans, you should know, was a city tailored to my taste for the excessive, exotic fringes of life, a world of port of such extravagance in 1829 when I arrived from southern Illinois-a newly freed bondman, my papers in an old portmanteau, a gift from my master in Makanda-that I dropped my bags and a shot of recognition shot up my spine to my throat, rolling off my tongue in a whispered, 'Here, Rutherford is home.'"

"'The sea does things to your head, Calhoun, terrible unravelings of belief that aren't in a cultured man's metaphysic. We ate tallow first, then sawdust, stopped up our noses and slurped foul water from the pumps before barbecuing that Negro boy.' Falcon added-sadly, I thought, 'He was dead, of course, crushed by a falling mast. He tasted...stringy.'"