In Louisa May's "Hospital Sketches," the author uses diction, images and details to create an effect of pain and sadness. The author's words tell the recreation of her experience of being a nurse, who painstakingly watches one of her patients, a solider, die in agony. The use of her words creates a feeling of sadness and a deep depressing pain within the reader.

."..he tore the covering off his breast, as if the lightest weight added to his agony." This sentence is an example of the author's use of diction. Such words as "tore" and "agony" create a painful and almost realistic feeling of the pain that the solider is experiencing as he dies in torment. The author's choice of the use of the words "tore" and "agony" give the story a more suspenseful and painful feeling than using other simpler words.

Imagery is also very common in...