The first half of "Bao Litou" uses a brisk tone to describe the distress, absurdity, and sexual repression of the Guo Litou, as well as the training and punishment they received. In the second half, the soldiers finally realized and witnessed the horror of the war. On the battlefield that they had been attacked by incendiary bombs, they saw the carbonized corpses and even maintained their postures at the last moments of their lives. Only then did Swarford and his comrades realize: what death means, and what it means to live. In front of a burning oil field, they walked in the muddy desert where oil and sand were mixed together, and even slept in it.
Sam Mendes used the same technique in "The Pot Cover" as his debut novel "American Beauty": using seemingly relaxed narrative methods, it provides a black, intense, and different reflection from the past. Reappearing the war years through the "ground-to-ground" and "ground-to-air" microscopic experience of a soldier on the ground.
