Imagery

This next chapter was absolutely jam-packed with imagery. It was entirely about the first man that Tim killed and went over-the-top in graphic detail. That image of the man lying on the ground must have been permanently etched in his mind the rest of his life.
"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 there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him." (page 118)
It continued on further but I thought that you'd get the idea. Once again, I cannot imagine how Tim must have been feeling after killing another human being. It was easy to see that he was overcome with guilt, but the truth of the matter is that's just the way war works. If he had not acted the way he had, there was a good chance that the man who he killed would have killed him instead. It's not fair and it seems impossible to do, but in reality it's what must be done in order to survive. Last year, Mrs. Helbing told my class that a famous man (I don't remember his name unfortunately) once said to a man joining the military, "Now remember: it is not your job to die for your country, is your job to make sure that the other man out there dies for his country." To me, this seemed like a good piece of advice. When it comes down to it, war is war and nothing is fair. I feel sympathy for Tim but I hope that other readers understand that it was an action of survival. I'm sure I would have taken it just as hard if it were me in the same circumstance.