Destruction (Metaphor)
A war doesn’t only affect lives of people; it changes the way the world around them looks. Before the Japanese army came, “the troops transformed the face of Nanking”. They “dug trenches in the streets, laid down underground telephone wire, and strung barbed wire over city intersections”. Nanking used to be a beautiful place, where one could easily find traces of history, but the preparations for the war and war itself destroyed ancient atmosphere and a unique look of the city.
No volunteers (Metaphor)
When Tang held the meeting dedicated to defense of Nanking, he asked the group whether they had “any confidence to hold the defense line”. He waited for several minutes, but “the room remained silent”, for there was no volunteer to do that. The Japanese army “had already broken through the gates of the city”, so holding the defense line would mean death.
Refugees (Metaphor)
As soon as people understood that the war was inevitable, they started looking for ways to save their lives. The panic reigned in the city. There were many people, who decided to leave everything and flee, for the number of the city’s population dropped from more than one million to about half a million. However, the city was “swollen with tens of thousands of migrants”, who looked for safety within the city walls. They were the most defenseless: children, the elderly, the poor, and the weak.
Alienated (Simile)
The author stated that Japanese military “academy was like an island to itself”. Its students were isolated from the rest of the world. The cadet “enjoyed neither privacy nor any opportunity to exercise individual leadership skill”. Even the “leisure time was nonexistent”. All these measures were needed in order to fill students’ heads with propaganda.
Broken and defeated (Simile)
One of the Japanese generals said that the Chinese army was “like ants crawling on the ground”. The Japanese were taught that their enemy was powerful and ready to fight, but that was not what they saw. The Chinese soldiers “looked like a bunch of homeless people”. They had neither will nor strength to fight back.
Worthless (Simile)
One of the Japanese soldiers admitted that when they raped women, they looked at her “as a woman”, but when they killed her, they “thought of her as something like a pig”. Believing that the Chinese people were worthless, that they were not even human beings, they treated them like dirt.
