 How can the description the protagonist’s eyes as “aflame” be understood as symbolic?
HOMECOMING BY MIGUEL HIDALGO What lasts forever? They had no place in the dust-caked, tired body, yet there they were, seeking, always seeking—searching the clear horizon, and never seeming to find what they sought. Then both man and horse plunged headlong into the waiting torrent, deep into the cool embrace of the clear liquid. Refreshed and momentarily content, he sat staring into the dying fire, seeing the bright glowing coals as living fingers clutching at the wood in consuming embrace, taking all and returning nothing but ashes. Images began to appear, drawn from inexhaustible files, wherein are kept all thoughts, past, present, and future.... It caught the shadows of the fire and reflected them, greatly magnified, over the room. When he opened it, he found a picture of her in one side, and in the other a picture of the children. Then he kissed her, and instantly was drawn down into the abyss which seemed to have no beginning or any end. Three days later they had landed in Spain, merged with another division, then crossed the Pyrenees into France, and finally to Paris where the fighting had begun. The Russians had not yet used the H-bomb; the threat of annihilation by the retaliation forces had been too great. In cities, great and small, the air raid sirens sounded, high screaming noises which had jarred the people from sleep in time to die. Many bombers fell, victims of fanatical suicide planes, or of missiles that streaked across the sky which none could escape. First there had been the red flashes that melted buildings into molten streams, and then the great triple-mushroom cloud filled with the poisonous gases that the wind swept away to other cities, where men had not died quickly and mercifully, but had rotted away, leaving shreds of putrid flesh behind to mark the places where they had crawled. Those who had remained alive had found a resting place on the crown of some distant mountain. Most of the cities and the majority of the population of both countries had been destroyed. Even their governments had vanished, leaving a silent nothingness. The armies that remained were without leaders, without sources of supplies, save what they could forage and beg from an unfriendly people. They were alone now, a group of tired, battered men, for whom life held nothing. Their families had long since died, their bodies turned to dust, their spirits fled on the winds to a new world.
 It is symbolic for his drive to return home to his wife.
 It is symbolic for his drive to win the war.  It is symbolic for his drive to find shelter.  It is symbolic for his drive to return home to his wife.  It is symbolic for his drive to cross the Rio Grande.