DICTION
"He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye shut. The other was a star-shaped hole.
'Talk,' Kiowa said." (pg.130)
O'Brien seemed to shut down in this passage. He can't talk he is beside himself with guilt or horrid fascination at what he had done. The diction the author used to describe the man killed makes the dead man seem almost child like. He uses "slim" and "dainty". Such words to describe an enemy soldiers makes the reader feel such great pity for the dead man. O'Brien thinks this way to make himself seem more guilty. For who would want to kill someone who was described like a cherub child or innocent. The diction helps add to the guilt and O'Brien's persistence to stay silent and brooding is the result.
It's odd. He shuts down, and yet he can't stop describing the same thing over and over, like a skipping record.
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