Spring Light
"A coppery light, more like Autumn than Spring, slanted across the grass, turning the thorned twigs of rose bushes into strips of live electric filament that glowed, reddish, in the dark."
Springtime is traditionally a time of birth and beginning; autumn, a time of falling leaves, and of things coming to an end. The author cleverly uses this imagery to show that whilst it is actually spring there is a feeling of ending about things, and that the light has a coppery, orange appearance. The thorned twigs are also a sign of things that are stark and not blessed yet with roses or buds. The connection with the coppery light, and the electric filament, is also very clever as it would be copper wire that was used as a conductor for electricity. The author paints a vivid vidual picture of the sudden brightness lighting up the dark, not with actual electrical power, but with nature's own illumination.
Sprague
"Sprague was a big, fleshy, floridly handsome man, with thick brows and startling blue-green eyes that slandted down at the outer corners. His neck and jowls had thickened, and rose from his broard shoulders in a single column. Hair sprouted from his ears, his nostrils, the cuffs of his shirt. He was as unmistakenly and crudely potent as a goat."
The author creates a very detailed visual picture of Sprague that is very animal in nature. His hirstuteness makes him seem more animal than man, and the sheer size of him is also something more than human. Each part of his appearance described gives him a solid, larger than life quality that emphasises how frightening going up against him must be. Everything about him is large, and gives the impression that he would be prone to sweating, and giving off an animal-like scent.
French War Zone
"He was in France now, lying out in the open with his platoon. The trenches had been blown flat, there was no shelter from the icy wind, no hope of getting the wounded back. And no water, because the water in the water bottles had frozen. Once a hawk flew over, its shadow black against the snow. The only movements, the only life, in a landscape dead as the men. Hour after hour of silence, and snow falling. Then, abruptly, Sanderson's convulsed and screaming face, as they cut the puttees away from his frostbitten legs."
The author paints an incredibly and starkly vivid picture of the front line after an attack where the only thing that can really be heard is silence. It is so quiet that it seems as if the men can hear the snow fall. The picture painted is of desolation. The men are dead and the landscape seems to reflect this with its own silence and solitude. The sounds that break through this silence are not gentle but are also stark, the screams of an injured soldier.
Eye In The Door
"What emerged most vividly was the eye in the door. He reverted to this again and again, how elaborately painted it had been, even to the veins in the iris, how the latrine bucket had been placed within sight of it, how it was never possible to tell whether a human eye was looking through the painted one or not."
The Eye in the Door that Billy first saw in Beattie's cell haunts him and the author's image of it shows us why. It is painted with such care that it looks like a human eye, but the fact that there may also be a human eye behind it, staring, magnifies the feeling of being watched. The author creates a feeling of unease with the image.
Billy's Parents
"He recalled her gentle, whining, reproachful voice going on and on, long after his father's stumbling footsteps had jerked him into wakefulness; how he had sat on the stairs and strained to hear, until his muscles ached with the tension, waiting for her to say the one thing that he would not be able to bear. And the scuffle of running steps, a stifled cry, and he would be halfway downstairs, listening to see if it was just a single slap, the back of his father's hand, sending his mother staggering against the wall, or if it was one of the bad times."
The author uses the imagery of sound to describe the constant fights between Billy's parents. Every sound that Billy hears is representing something that is happening and he does not need to be able to see the action to know what it is. Even his father's footsteps appeal to our auditory senses as they are loud enough to wake the sleeping boy. Then there is scuffling, running, and hitting, sounds that recreate in their own right the anatomy of the abuse that Billy hears on a daily basis. It is not necessary for the reader to actually see the abuse because we, like Billy, are able to visualize it guided by the author's description of the sounds.
