Spilled Wine
Imagery of spilled wine—first by the younger man and later by the officer—act as symbolic foreshadowing of bad blood between the two erupting into bloody violence.
Marching Toward Mountains
The story commences with geographical imagery which serves as psychological symbolism. The marching is taking place within a deep valley with fallow fields of corn and rye on either side. Ahead in the distance looms snow-capped mountains toward which the regiment seems always to be marching without ever reaching; something tempting but seemingly unattainable.
Unquenchable Thirst
On no less than six occasions, the narrator describes in detail the young man’s burning, aching thirst. His unsatisfied thirst is metaphorically connected to the mountain symbolism:
“like the golden, lustrous gleaming of the snow he felt his own thirst bright in him.”
But one passage in particular is invested with a more concrete and literal unsatisfied desire:
“thirsty as he was, he could scarcely drink, feeling the Captain near him.”
Shadows
What lies in the shadows where light is obscured by darkness? Secrets and things which can’t be said or done in the harsh, unforgiving illumination. The young orderly follows the officer on horseback “like a shadow.” The shadow of the Captain’s helmet leaves his mouth exposed by conceals the windows into his soul. By the end, for the young man, the entire world has become “a ghostly shadow.” Multiple references to shadows act as symbolic hints suggesting the more primitive psychological truths within people which cannot be manifested in the full light of societal conventions and ethical rules of conduct.
The Climax
The climax of the story is the violent confrontation between the officer and the orderly. Word choices such as “he shoved at the chin, with all his might” and “all the force of all his blood exulting in his thrust” combine with the visual imagery of “the hard twitchings of the prostrate body jerking his own whole frame, which was pressed down on it” to transform the murderous beating into a symbolic act of the release of repressed sexuality.
