How does Thomas Bell use imagery in Out of This Furnace?

Imagery:

"Her poor health, or America, had changed her; Kracha never could decide. He had left her a lively, healthy girl, cheerful as the day was long; now she seldom smiled and went about her housework listlessly. She never complained except of tiredness; when Kracha asked her, sometimes gently, sometimes not, what was wrong she invariably replied, 'Nothing.'

"In the old country the Slovaks had been an oppressed minority from the beginning of time, a simple, religious, unwarlike people, a nation of peasants and shepherds whom the centuries had taught patience and humility. In America they were all this and more, foreigners in a strange land, ignorant of its language and customs, fearful of authority in whatever guise. Arrived in America they were thrust—peasants and shepherds that they were—into the blast furnaces and rolling mills, and many of them paid with their lives for their unfamiliarity with machinery and the English language. Even more bewildering were the hostility and contempt of their neighbors, the men they worked with..."