"I was down there with him, inside him, I was part of the night, I was the land itself- everything everywhere- the fireflies and paddies, the midnight rustlings, the cool phosphorescent shimmer of evil - I was atrocity - I was jungle fire, jungle drums - I was the blind stare in the eyes of all those poor, dead ex-pals of mine - all the pale young corpses, Lee Strunk and Kiowa and Curt Lemon - I was the beast on their lips - the horror and the war." (p. 199)
I believe this paragraph is also an extended metaphor, but I liked it because it shows just what war has done to O'Brien. Often one hears about post-traumatic stress disorders in war veterans, and I think this paragraph exemplifies it. O'Brien has gone so hungry for revenge, that he himself is the war, he is able to use everything that he knows scares himself to scare Jorgenson. What is worse though, is that later on, he ends up scaring himself. To me it is as if the war has take root in his soul and he can never stop fighting. O'Brien must always remember and always reuse what he has seen. This paragraph has an almost spooky tone to it when you realize how far over the edge O'Brien seems to have gone in it. It certainly makes me wonder what kind of effects the wars of today are having on veterans now.
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