Imagery

O'Brien uses a lot of imagery to describe the setting and events occuring throughout the story. I think he chooses to do so because he wants his readers to be a part of the story as he was. He wants them to know exactly what he knows, to feel exactly as he felt. He wants other people to know what it was like to have feelings of guilt and lonliness and fear and appreciation. One of the most noticeable uses of imagery throughout the story was when O'Brien describes the man he killed (which he does several times). "His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept ipward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was slightly freckled, his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterflu on his chim, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blook there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him." Obviously this sentence is just overflowing with imagery and description. At first when I read this I wondered how many years had passed before O'Brien wrote this story because in my mind I doubted that he would be capable of remembering all of those little details. But then i reconsidered. I decided that if I had killed someone- even if it was my job as it was his- that person's lifeless image would be imbedded in my memory forever. I think that's why the author described every detail he could think of. I can only imagine that the face of that man haunts him all the time. By describing the man he killed, maybe O'Brien feels some sense of satisfaction knowing that he isnt the only one seeing the man's face in his mind anymore- but maybe not. That's how I would feel anyways.