 How can the description the protagonist’s eyes as “aflame” be understood as symbolic?
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.... 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. Most of the cities and the majority of the population of both countries had been destroyed.
 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.