"The rock-it's talking. And the fog,too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Undertand? Nam-it truly talks."
The rocks, grass, and trees were not actually speaking words. They are lifeless. However, it is funny that the author gave them the quality of talking, especially those of religion and politics seeings how those are big in our society today. To me, portraying the inanimate objects talking, shows how minds start to wander. I often get confused as to why authors use personification. Can't they just show people? However, I came to realize in this story that it adds depth to the existing story. In war, things can be very quiet. By having the trees talk, they had a sense of eerie comfort to the men. Sometimes its better to hear strange things, then absolutely nothing at all. I don't belive he added it to show they were going crazy, rather the author added to show how communication is the only way to get points across.
I didn't get a sense that the soldiers were comforted by this.
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