re: Literary analysis question

killed himself

ETA: It just mentions a "battle" but isn't specific. I think the reader is supposed to fill in the blank with his own interpretation.

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I wrote the passage referenced in the OP.

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You motherfricker

Nice job, though

just messing. I'll give you a quick 2:30amEST critique:

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Under the soft evening light, he surrendered.

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i like the suspense here, and the questions this sentence raises. However, I would expand it. Make it last longer. Substitute "soft evening light" with more showing, less telling (pardon the Stein). How do you evoke softness? evening? light? don't tell us those shortcuts. Make us see them. Experience them.

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The willow trees and the hanging moss proved to be good spectators throughout the surprisingly calm ordeal.

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again, good suspense, but the adverb falls flat. when in doubt delete adverbs. especially those ending in "ly." The "proved" verb is distracting. It is a bit of a harbinger, but it's a stop and read word in this context. you're drawing attention to the writing and away from the scene itself. same with spectators. I appreciate the metaphor, in the abstract, but your reader will not. Think about captivating, instead of writing.

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No words were written down; the entire concession was mental and implicit. He just couldn't fight the battle anymore. It decayed him, caused him to abandon his friends, making his entire existence an empty dirt lot.

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pretty much the same comment as above. You need to have real action going on by this point. You don't have to compromise literary integrity to create a scene with action in it. And I'm not talking about Carl Weathers. But take what you just said, preserve the message, and make it come alive.

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His odious enemy was never going to give up what it will hold captive for eternity.

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I guess all enemies are odious. If not, then show us the irony. weave in your abstractions. Make us guess and wonder, but based on what people do, don't do, say, withhold. You're just telling us how someone feels and thinks and what he or she (you say "it," which is the most interesting part of this sentence) covets. You need to take this sentence and create an entire story around it. Why are you telling us this?

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So, with the evening sun spreading orange light over the field and hills beyond before being engulfed by the horizon, and with the drooping sage-like willows turning to silhouettes in the innocent and fresh darkness,

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borders on overly flowery language, but could definitely work in the context of a larger scene.

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the surrender was signed off with a flash, a loud bang, and a short time later, the sound of sirens.

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by far the best sentence of the passage.

Take your writing to the next level. You have a gift with words, but I would concentrate less on making things sound pretty and more on quickening your ideas into characters and converting the words into action, emotions, and tension that hits us without knowing we're reading.

Sounds like a suicide. Ya'll have obviously gotten that far.