The Use Of Metaphors In The Vietnam War

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he, in a subtle sarcasm, mocks society 's idealization of the harsh reality of war and its dismissal of the pain and torture experienced by the soldiers till their inevitable demise when he mentions that the wretched soldiers are thought to be "hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses." By virtue of a combination of the DEATH IS DEPARTURE and DEATH IS NIGHT conceptual metaphors, we read the linguistic expression "go west" as denoting the soldiers ' death. And via the DEATH IS GOING TO A FINAL DESTINATION metaphor, we visualize the "tombs" as the final destination to which their bodies are sent with "wreaths" in "hearses."