The Effects of Imagery

"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 upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly 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 butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood thee was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him. He lay face-up in the center of the trail..." (p. 118)


The way that O'Brien uses both violent and peaceful imagery in this passage is intriguing. It shows both sides of war, as well as both sides of death. Throughout this novel, O'Brien uses highly descriptive imagery which helps one to imagine the characters and setting fairly easily. The underlined parts in the section above are that which carry violence, and I think it is different how once O'Brien begins to include such violence, he suddenly skips back into a description of normalcy. It is as if he is trying to reconcile the violence by covering it up with something more peaceful, more beautiful and less painful to remember. O'Brien's form of imagery often comes across to me as his thought process and his memories, more than his trying to give details to a fictional story. This is one of the reasons I have enjoyed reading this novel so much. The images that I can form in my head are fully described, yet at the same time lack enough to allow me to become part of the action of the novel. I think this takes great skill in a writer, not to come across as forcing details upon the reader.