Imagery

"After a while, as the night deepens, you feel a funny buzzing in your ears. Tiny sounds get heightened and distorted. The crickets talk in code; the night takes on a weird electronic tingle. You hold your breath. You coil up and tighten your muscles and listen, knuckles hard, the pulse ticking in your head. You hear the spooks laughing. You jerk up, you freeze, you squint at the dark. Nothing, though. You put your weapon on full automatic. You crouch lower and count your grenades and make sure the pins are bent for quick throwing and take a deep breath and listen and try not to freak. And then later, after enough time passes, things start to get bad" (page 205).

In this passage, O' Brien uses language to evoke a picture of an experience. O' Brien wants to describe the feeling one experiences when on night guard. He wants to demonstrate the fear of the darkness and the sounds of the night. He does this through descriptive language that creates an image of the soldier on guard. He describes the many sounds and the way they affect one's mind when they are alone. O' Brien describes the sensation and reactions to the sounds. The purpose of this passage is to get the reader to better understand the fears soldiers face during night guard.