Secretive man
From the second chapter, John is described as being a secretive man. Even his mother admits that she could never figure out what he was thinking and he kept secrets even from his wife. The description offered here has the purpose of portraying John as a mysterious man, someone hard to know and understand and someone who is possibly dangerous.
Face in the pillow
In the morning when John wakes up to discover that Kathy was gone, he buried his face in the pillow and went back to sleep instead of going out and looking for her. The image of John burying his face in a pillow is important because it suggests that he is unable to deal with the uncomfortable aspects in his life. What he does instead is to hide from them and avoid them as best as he can.
Steaming eye sockets
After realizing that Kathy is gone, John begins to panic and think about the worst case scenario and what could have happened to Kathy. John imagines her lying dead somewhere, with steam coming out of her eye sockets. The image is disturbing and will be a recurrent image in the novel and it is used here to point out just how insane John was getting and how he was slowly losing control.
Vulnerable girl
When the soldiers attacked the village Thuan Yen, he remembers going into a hut and seeing a small girl with her pants down, killed by one of his fellow soldiers. The image of the dead girl is important because it shows how cruel the Americans were during the Vietnam War. They did not hesitate to massacre an entire village and kill everyone living there, children, women or the elderly while remaining unaffected by the horrors around them. The image portrayed here shows just how much war can change a person and hard it is to come back to a normal life and witnessing and performing such cruel acts.
