Read the excerpt from Dispatches . The far side of the hills around the bowl of the base was glimmering, but you could never see the source of the light, and it had the look of a city at night approached from a great distance. Flares were dropping everywhere around the fringes of the perimeter, laying a dead white light on the high ground rising from the piedmont. There would be dozens of them at once sometimes, trailing an intense smoke, dropping white-hot sparks, and it seemed as though anything caught in their range would be made still, like figures in a game of living statues. There would be the muted rush of illumination rounds, fired from 60-mm. mortars inside the wire, dropping magnesium-brilliant above the NVA trenches. The sensory details in the excerpt evoke a sense of
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surprise and excitement.The passage emphasizes vivid, dramatic images: hills glimmer like a distant city, flares spread a “dead white light,” and sparks fall from the sky. The comparison to “figures in a game of living statues” makes the scene seem strange and visually striking. These details create a sense of awe and wonder, rather than hope, excitement, or disgust.
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