The use of this technique engages the audience in the story more by helping us to get clearer images of what the landscape at Gallipoli was like, as well as letting us a get a clearer picture of Jim and other characters in our mind. For example the simile "his throat was as parched as the stoned slopes of wire gully" shows us that Jim's throat was very dry. Obviously from the lack of precious water, and most likely caused as well from the effects of the tiny amount of rations that each soldier was forced to live off at war. .
The use of personification in the sentences "heat leapt up at you from the paved streets ." and "the pain was eating through him" inform us that the conditions at WW1 were very hot and steamy. This was made worse by the fact that the land around them was so bare and that the heat only bounced of it and right back at you. The second example gives us a clear image of how much pain Jim Martin was in when he was taken from the front line and put onto the hospital ship. It also shows us that the soldiers were only human, they were not some super humans who couldn't feel pain. They were just ordinary people who went off to fight for a country they loved. We get a clearer image of Jim in the descriptive sentence "they cleaned his pitifully thin body: for the young soldier once tall, strong and fit had lost half his body weight". This sentence describes Jim on the hospital ship after he had served more than a year in the front line. It shows the effects the conditions had on soldiers and that it wasn't common for strong, fit soldiers to waste away in the trenches at war. .
Through figurative language Hill informs us about the poor conditions at war, the suffering that the Anzac's went through at war and helps us to get a clearer picture of Jim Martin. It makes us feel apart of it as we now have a better understanding of what soldiers endured in the hard times of war.
Hill uses tone in the novel to convey to us all the different types of emotions felt by characters in the story.
